Mexican Gothic
By Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Publication Year: 2020
Type: Fiction
Genre: Gothic, historical fiction, horror, fantasy
Read on 2022-11-23
★★★☆☆
A well-worn Gothic premise in the novel setting of 1950s Mexican countryside. This book hits all the best Gothic cliches, i.e. a young woman is sent to a creepy remote mansion with prickly secretive inhabitants and uncovers a terrible mystery. The themes of eugenics, racism, colonialism are a little heavy handed but the way it’s imbued into the horror-fantasy plot is still interesting enough. The revelation at the end is also very original, but while the final quarter of the book picks up, the rest really drags. I guess in that sense it follows the structure of the Gothic classics like Wuthering Heights, Rebecca, Jane Eyre almost too well in that not much happens except atmospheric spooky edging until all is revealed at the end. (Although to be fair to Jane Eyre lots of things happen in that book).
The protagonist is also a little one-note and lacks a clear arc or character development. She starts as a flirty cosmopolitan socialite and is just sort of buoyed along by mystery of the house without much internal growth or reflection. This is essentially true of most of the other characters too.
Based on the summaries I read, I definitely did not expect this book to be as horror-fantasy as it is. I expected a much more atmospheric Gothic sort of a thing. Lots of body horror, too which I’m not really into.
Big content warnings for sexual assault, drugging, and violence including murder and suicide.
I was a little disappointed in this given the first and only other book by this author I’ve read, Gods of Jade and Shadow, really knocked it out of the park for me.
★★★★★ This might be the best book I’ve read all year, and certainly the best and smoothest reading experience I’ve had in MONTHS. Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an adventure fantasy/myth retelling set in Mexico in the 1920s Jazz Age.