This book is deeply disturbing in the best way possible. It has delicious and chewy prose, uncanny horror scenes, and a vivid setting. The story is slow, but Noemí, the protagonist, is charismatic enough to carry it. Effortlessly shrewd and self assured, she can deliver biting social commentary, talk circles around other people's politics and beliefs, and come across as a harmless socialite the entire time.

Though she garners a reputation for being flighty, she isn't without ambition, so when her father offers to send her to university as long as she first visits her cousin on the Mexican countryside, she agrees. Of course, the creepy house in the countryside is haunted by some sort of pervasive colonial force that is somehow tied to the racist attitudes of the English family who owns the property. As competent as Noemí might be, she finds herself understandably out of her depth. Despite her shortcomings, it's still easy to root for her as she navigates the surreal and unsettling horror sequences. The antagonists and side characters are also compelling. Along with Noemí, they make this book impossible to put down, even in the face of the distressing horror scenes that Silvia Moreno-Garcia likes to describe with gross and gory details. ( )

Okay so. Moreno-Garcia did her research before writing this book. And she lets you know. Right down to listing scientific names for fungi and chemical compounds that the characters recall off the tops of their heads.

The story centers on a woman in Mexico around the 1920's, I think? 50's? At any rate, she is of a wealthy family who grumbles about her wanting to pursue an education and not get married. She is attending University and has changed majors several times, for which she's teased by her family. But. A woman attending University would have been rare and she likely would have had to fight to remain in school since the gender stereotypes and cultural expectations are still dominant today and were even more pervasive back then. That she is so flippant about everything is super modern and her ideas about Anthropology seem too convenient to assist in the info dumps that are scattered throughout the novel.

The dialogue is very clunky and full of too much information. The descriptions are cinematic to a fault. Moreno-Garcia is clearly imagining the film version of this novel as she tries to describe what is happening to her characters. We get much less empathic connection to the characters (required in any novel, but especially a gothic novel, I think) and more description of things like the lighting and what color someone's eyes are. She repeats her descriptions every time her characters enter a room as well, making for a tiring read.

And in the end, this fiercely (modern), independent, educated woman who begins the novel by fighting to pursue her passions, ends up in the arms of a man and lives happily ever after. Not exactly the picture of empowerment it started out as.

The bad guys are cool, if poorly written, but rely heavily on spoon-feeding the complicated plot to the reader. The whole thing would have been much better had all the unnecessary details been cut, with more focus on character development. Noemi is exactly the same person at the end of the novel that she was at the beginning. ( )

I love gothic tropes, and spooky houses so I was into this spin on a classic format. It was a bit long for what it was, and some of the dream bits were too dreamy for me to understand and invision them, but it was spooky nonetheless! I’ve rated it a 4 but it’s a low 4. The love interest was bland as broth and the heroine kept describing him as ugly ( )

Mexican Gothic ♦ Silvia Moreno-Garcia | Review

Mexican Gothic had already fascinated me with the mysterious but beautiful cover. The blurb also impressed me. But what happened next, I wasn’t prepared for. Despite how exciting it seems, this story is lacking depth. The charm, or challenge, depending on how you look at it, of this weird yet engaging story is found in the final third of the narrative.



Mexican Gothic ♦ Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Opinion

Noemí Taboada, a young, wealthy, and wild party girl in the 1950s in Mexico, travels to isolated High Place, a very old estate that has been contaminated with the decay of dead and mold all over the place of the mansion. A strange letter from her ailing cousin, Catalina, in which she is pleading for rescue from High Place and an unidentified oppressor, is the reason for Noemí’s trip.

When Noemí arrives at the spooky place with its creepy residents, very quickly she realizes that something is seriously wrong. She experiences dreams, delusions, and voices Francis Doyle, a weak young man intimidated by his powerful elders is the only Doyle family member, Catalina married into, that Noemí can possibly trust. The story is pretty disgusting when I realized what is happening. As much as I enjoyed the haunting story and the exposure of all the physical horrors and sacrifices, I had to get used to this narrative. This book is for people who like light horror and some creepy stuff. I have no regrets reading this book, but it was definitely not what I expected.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a truly talented writer. Her emotional style of writing quickly captivates her readers. The final third of the book was wonderful despite being weird, whereas the first two thirds were a touch dull and slow-paced. It got off to a great start. I loved the ominous mood and the spooky relatives. Some of them I wanted to slap into reality. The storytelling got somewhat unreliable, that at some point I couldn’t really follow it no more and I got confused quickly. The part of the family patriarch’s old and mysterious secret took an immense toll on my imagination. Everything turned out to be absurd and strange.

Conclusion

⭐⭐⭐/5

Even though it was a peculiar read I’m pleased I read Mexican Gothic because now I finally understand the commotion about it. Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a talented writer with a distinctive style of expression, which I already experience in her book The Beautiful Ones. I’ll attempt reading the German edition of this book once more, although my first read left a strange feeling, which I couldn’t shake off yet. Sometimes a translation can carry a complete different feeling.


This review was first published at The Art of Reading. ( )

Auch die deutsche Übersetzung konnte mich von dem Buch nicht überzeugen. Klar, es war atmosphärisch, teils auch wirklich gruselig. Aber auch sehr, na ja ... anders. Und am Ende blieb es ein wenig verwirrend. ( )