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Pitch-perfect 'mexican gothic' ratchets up the dread.

Jessica P. Wick

Mexican Gothic , by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Del Rey hide caption

Mexican Gothic , by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic is a thoroughly enjoyable, thought-provoking novel. I want to discuss it around tea, preferably while in the mountains, preferably somewhere well-lit. I remember placing my bookmark in the book and thinking, I should not have read this before bed.

I was afraid of what I might dream.

Noémi's cousin Catalina writes a strange letter begging for help. She claims her new husband Virgil Doyle is poisoning her, that "fleshless things" and ghosts trouble her, that "they will not let me go." Noémi — self-assured, chic and stubborn — leaves the glamor of 1950s Mexico City for the countryside, still depressed after a mining bust and fecund with secrets, to determine whether Catalina needs rescue.

Reader, she does. The situation is more complicated and sinister than the initial fear of just a con artist husband isolating his new wife and convincing the world she's mad so he can steal her money.

The Doyles of High Place are so Anglo and insular they brought European earth for their garden. Rot seeps from cracks, corrupts wallpaper and slimes the ceilings of the house. There is no regular electricity, so our heroine must get around with candles and oil lamps. Smoking cigarettes, going into town, and conversation at dinner are all against house rules. And when conversation does happen, the patriarch of the clan (Howard) says things like "You are much darker than your cousin," and approvingly discusses eugenics. Virgil and Florence (High Place's mistress) keep Noémi away from Catalina, saying she's in mysterious "treatments." Noémi's only potential ally is Francis, Florence's sheltered and delicate son. But even his friendship only stretches so far — and can it stretch further than the family land he's never left?

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Noémi's dreams become haunted: A woman whose face is a golden cloud tries to speak, accompanied by visceral dread. Dream Virgil appears, a figure of lust and terror. A dead woman repeatedly tells Noémi to open her eyes. Where the dreamworld ends and reality begins feels uncertain. Noémi wonders whether she is losing her mind.

The reader isn't sure, either.

There is a gradual rise of dread in Mexican Gothic . It never quite falls off, even at the end, which I loved for its satisfying ambiguity; this is a novel that will leave you wary even after the last page. Mexican Gothic touches on racial, class, and labor inequity, the way these things fester, infusing the landscape and blighting generations. High Place is haunted by memory. The very air is possessed. This is Silvia Moreno-Garcia's greatness as a storyteller: She makes you uneasy about invisible things by writing around them. Even when you think you know what lurks, the power to unsettle isn't diminished. Secrets brought to light stay disquieting.

During the more surreal sequences, I was reminded of Remedios Varo's paintings, Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak (this story is much better crafted), or Jeff Vandermeer's Ambergris . I appreciated the frequent winks at classic Gothic novels, even as Moreno-Garcia hit all of the expected tropes.

Mexican Gothic is a pitch-perfect Gothic novel. The Gothics knew the only thing more full of horrors than the landscape is the human heart, that the human heart is a haunting. We often think of Frankenstein's monster as magical; a limb drops off and cartoon Frank sews it back on, but Frankenstein's monster was more Romantic than that. So is Mexican Gothic . Moreno-Garcia (an occasional NPR contributor) spins science, myth, and obsession into an effective tale of supernatural horror and determination. We are asked to consider the terror of losing agency, of being part of or becoming monstrousness whether you will or not. Something is sick. Nothing is as it seems. We are possessed by the air we breathe. We are haunted by our bodies and the people who came before us. Can one escape that?

To help us through, there is a bright whisper of goodness — Noémi's wit and vivacity, even as the Doyles pick her apart with criticism, Francis's quiet will, light growing where it shouldn't. You will want to see this heroine succeed, you'll desperately root for her escape; as desperately, you will want other characters to fall. But in Mexican Gothic we are asked to consider the things abusers do to create their next victims, the lengths one might go to control the future, and whether the snake can ever stop eating its tail.

You will be left unsettled, unsteady, and uncertain. You will also be left satisfied.

And you will remember High Place, though hopefully not in your dreams.

Jessica P. Wick is a writer, freelance editor, and California native currently living in Rhode Island.

Mexican Gothic

Silvia moreno-garcia.

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New York Times Bestseller

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MEXICAN GOTHIC

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 30, 2020

Fans of gothic classics like Rebecca will be enthralled as long as they don’t mind a heaping dose of all-out horror.

Moreno-Garcia offers a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror, set in 1950s Mexico.

Inquisitive 22-year-old socialite and anthropology enthusiast Noemí Taboada adores beautiful clothes and nights on the town in Mexico City with a bevy of handsome suitors, but her carefree existence is cut short when her father shows her a disturbing letter from her cousin Catalina, who recently married fair-haired and blue-eyed Virgil Doyle, who comes from a prominent English mining family that built their now-dwindling fortune on the backs of Indigenous laborers. Catalina lives in High Place, the Doyle family’s crumbling mansion near the former mining town of El Triunfo. In the letter, Catalina begs for Noemí’s help, claiming that she is “bound, threads like iron through my mind and my skin,” and that High Place is “sick with rot, stinks of decay, brims with every single evil and cruel sentiment.” Upon Noemí’s arrival at High Place, she’s struck by the Doyle family’s cool reception of her and their unabashed racism. She's alarmed by the once-vibrant Catalina’s listless state and by the enigmatic Virgil and his ancient, leering father, Howard. Nightmares, hallucinations, and phantasmagoric dreams of golden dust and fleshy bodies plague Noemí, and it becomes apparent that the Doyles haven’t left their blood-soaked legacy behind. Luckily, the brave Noemí is no delicate flower, and she’ll need all her wits about her for the battle ahead. Moreno-Garcia weaves elements of Mexican folklore with themes of decay, sacrifice, and rebirth, casting a dark spell all the way to the visceral and heart-pounding finale.

Pub Date: June 30, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-525-62078-5

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Del Rey

Review Posted Online: April 12, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2020

FANTASY | PARANORMAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL FICTION

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SEEN & HEARD

FOURTH WING

From the empyrean series , vol. 1.

by Rebecca Yarros ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 2, 2023

Read this for the action-packed plot, not character development or worldbuilding.

On the orders of her mother, a woman goes to dragon-riding school.

Even though her mother is a general in Navarre’s army, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail was raised by her father to follow his path as a scribe. After his death, though, Violet's mother shocks her by forcing her to enter the elite and deadly dragon rider academy at Basgiath War College. Most students die at the War College: during training sessions, at the hands of their classmates, or by the very dragons they hope to one day be paired with. From Day One, Violet is targeted by her classmates, some because they hate her mother, others because they think she’s too physically frail to succeed. She must survive a daily gauntlet of physical challenges and the deadly attacks of classmates, which she does with the help of secret knowledge handed down by her two older siblings, who'd been students there before her. Violet is at the mercy of the plot rather than being in charge of it, hurtling through one obstacle after another. As a result, the story is action-packed and fast-paced, but Violet is a strange mix of pure competence and total passivity, always managing to come out on the winning side. The book is categorized as romantasy, with Violet pulled between the comforting love she feels from her childhood best friend, Dain Aetos, and the incendiary attraction she feels for family enemy Xaden Riorson. However, the way Dain constantly undermines Violet's abilities and his lack of character development make this an unconvincing storyline. The plots and subplots aren’t well-integrated, with the first half purely focused on Violet’s training, followed by a brief detour for romance, and then a final focus on outside threats.

Pub Date: May 2, 2023

ISBN: 9781649374042

Page Count: 528

Publisher: Red Tower

Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2024

FANTASY | EPIC FANTASY | GENERAL FANTASY | GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

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The twisted evil of eugenics made real in the novel ‘Mexican Gothic’

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Noemí Taboada, the heroine of Silvia Moreno-Garcia ’s novel, “Mexican Gothic,” lives for pleasure, and in 1950s Mexico City, she can find plenty of it. She manages a whirl of cigarette smoke and cocktails, as vibrant and brittle as a butterfly, without scandalizing herself or her social class. Yet she aspires to more; though Noemí’s father dismisses her academic passions, she’s finished an undergraduate degree in anthropology.

Her plans to begin graduate school are diverted by a call from an uncle. Her cousin Catalina, married to an Englishman named Virgil Doyle whose family owned a large strip mine, now lives in a country manor known as High Place that may also be her prison; among Catalina’s melodramatic-sounding claims is that it “stinks of decay, brims with every single evil and cruel sentiment.” Noemí is sent to find out if her cousin is ill or in danger.

All the gothic tropes promised in the winking title are in place: The sacrificial virgin; the damsel in distress; the cruel, unyielding husband; the spooky, distant locale; even a Mrs. Danvers -esque chatelaine named Florence, Virgil’s sister. Let’s not forget her son, seemingly spineless Francis, and the aged, rotting, domineering paterfamilias, Howard Doyle, whose sway over the household is inexplicable — at first.

But Moreno-Garcia isn’t just rattling off genre signifiers. The author’s postcolonial spin on the gothic tradition evokes the usual suspects: Daphne du Maurier, Emily Brontë, Mary Shelley, even Anne Radcliffe. Like those authors, Moreno-Garcia works in a tradition in which chills and thrills tap into elemental cultural fears — runaway science, carnal passion. But to these she adds a more politically inflected horror, both ancient and timely: A racist will to power.

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Cousin Catalina presents initially as a Victorian-style hypochondriac, whose illness might be “the vapors” compounded by an unhealthy dependence on a tincture procured from the nearby village. Moreno-Garcia writes simply in these early pages, her declarative sentences and straightforward descriptions playing against the creeping gloom.

Whenever Noemí tries to light a cigarette, Florence stops her: it’s against the rules. Nearly everything seems to be against the rules — Howard’s rules — from nicotine to electrical lighting. The father’s creepy fiefdom exudes Britain’s imperialist history as well as its literary traditions. The house is “absolutely Victorian in construction, with its broken shingles, elaborate ornamentation, and dirty bay windows”; completing the portrait are a vast collection of silver plates and vessels and a cloying wine served nightly.

Moreno-Garcia’s previous novels have ranged widely: a fantasy based on Mayan lore (“ Gods of Jade and Shadow ”); a narco vampire horror (“ Certain Dark Things ”); the story of a magical, decade-hopping mixtape (“ Signal to Noise ”). And here she is up to far more than a country-house locked-room chiller. At night, Noemí succumbs to strange, lucid dreams, bouts of sleepwalking and erotic pangs for Virgil, whom she finds repellent by the light of day.

This gothic amalgam of repulsion and desire adheres especially to the family’s mysterious symbol: a snake circling around to swallow its own tail. Many readers will recognize before Noemí does that this is the classical ouroboros , a concept originating in ancient Egypt and used by many early cultures to signify the cycle of death and rebirth. Over the millennia it’s come to signify other things too, including fertility, self-cannibalism and infinity, but even a reader who has never encountered the scaly symbol will feel a shiver on encountering it in High Place time and again. On carpets and furnishings and even in stained glass, its “One is All” motto recalls Tolkien’s menacing “ring to rule them all.”

A closed circle can also signal a closed family — or a self-limiting gene pool. Just as Shelley’s “Frankenstein” expressed the fear of science unleashed, Moreno-Garcia is plumbing the farthest reaches of another repellant and yet (to many) distressingly alluring cultural force. Howard Doyle believes strongly in eugenics.

USC removes name of Rufus von KleinSmid, a eugenics leader, from prominent building

USC has removed the name of former President Rufus von KleinSmid, a eugenics supporter, from a prominent campus building.

June 12, 2020

This patriarch’s opinions take hold of him physically. He retreats to his room, and for good reason: When Noemí is brought in to see him, she finds a sick, gasping creature covered with open sores that reek of spoiled fruit. Catalina’s descriptions weren’t so hyperbolic after all; nor was her own condition, which seems to be deteriorating. By the time Noemí learns the family’s deepest secrets, she’s a part of them, a player in their scheme to better the Doyles forevermore.

Mexico has a fraught history with eugenics, which flourished after the Revolution of the early 20 th century. As in other Latin-American countries, eugenics in Mexico was weaponized to encourage the procreation of the “fit” in order to rebuild the post-war population. Moreno-Garcia somewhat muddles this history, which is her right as a novelist, adding layers of meaning that highlight the clash between colonial powers and a nation struggling to come into its own. Noemí finds journals and papers about eugenics in Howard’s library, and reads a marked passage about the “impulsive temperament” of “the half-breed mestizo.” She throws it in the trash.

Sometimes I longed for more about this piece of Mexico’s past, a slightly more direct reckoning with the history. Yet Moreno-Garcia aims not just to edify but to thrill. Readers will cheer as Noemí fights off the nasty Doyles, gasp as they pull her back in. Writing about “Mexican Gothic” without spoiling it isn’t easy, because the author plants clues along the way, which might ruin her fabulous, freaky, one-of-a-kind denouément. Suffice it to say that Noemí and Francis must battle a variety of demons in confronting the origin of the Doyle family power — demons that evoke both Mexican and English tropes, from silver heirlooms to Mayan legends and mycological hallucinations of all kinds .

By the time readers have tiptoed and reeled in Noemí’s well-heeled shoes, the turn from mannered mystery to twisted horror will seem as inevitable as the nightmare logic of a Grimm fairy tale. Yet “Mexican Gothic” has an ending that turns Western fairy tales upside down. In the process of surprising us one last time, Moreno-Garcia proves that it’s possible to create a believable female protagonist who defies not just the Doyles but the patriarchy of her time — the more polite eugenics of family that didn’t traffic in serpent symbols or dark rites — to fight for what she knows is a more righteous future.

Patrick is a freelance critic who tweets @TheBookMaven .

Mexican Gothic Sylvia Moreno-Garcia Del Rey: 320 pages, $27

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In the deliciously creepy new novel Mexican Gothic, the true evil is colonialism

A cosmopolitan Mexico City socialite navigates the provincial horrors of an English manor in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel.

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There is something monstrously fecund, something growing and decaying and rotting, in High Place, the center of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel Mexican Gothic .

High Place is an English-style manor house perched above the old Mexican mining town of El Triunfo. As the novel opens in the 1950s, the silver mine is closed and the town is miserably impoverished. But the Doyles, the English family who operated the mine, still reign in crumbling and isolated splendor over everything.

In High Place, mold crawls across the walls. Electricity is rationed, so everyone must walk around with gas lamps or candelabras. The garden is planted in soil shipped over from Europe. Spanish is forbidden, and English is the only language spoken. Everything smells of rot. Into this creepy, insular atmosphere comes the high-spirited young socialite Noémi.

Noémi does not particularly care to leave her fashionable life in Mexico City behind, but she’s on a rescue mission: Her cousin Catalina married into the Doyle family and was whisked away to High Place before her own family had a chance to properly meet the Doyles. Now Catalina’s letters are laced with horror.

Catalina thinks her husband is poisoning her. She sees ghosts walking through the walls. “I am bound, threads like iron through my mind and my skin and it’s there. In the walls,” she writes. Noémi is in High Place with a job to do: Find out whether Catalina is insane or merely frightened, and in either case, figure out how best to help her.

But at High Place, the Doyles keep Noémi away from Catalina. The cousins are allowed to meet only under close supervision, with the Doyles claiming that Catalina needs rest and some kind of mysterious treatment. They tell Noémi that Catalina is recovering from tuberculosis.

In between visits with her cousin, Noémi busies herself exploring the house. She finds more mold, and volume after volume of books on eugenics. At dinner, the Doyle patriarch Howard remarks to Noémi that she is “much darker” than her cousin. “What are your thoughts on the intermingling of superior and inferior types?” he asks her.

At night, Noémi begins to dream strange dreams: of sex with Catalina’s husband that is both unwanted and deeply pleasurable; of a woman made of gold who tells her to open her eyes; of murder and constrain and rot, rot everywhere.

Slowly and inexorably, the dread builds.

The gothic in this book goes well beyond surface-level tropes

Moreno-Garcia is playing with great dexterity here with the conventions of the gothic house novel: all these women roaming a decaying mansion in their nightgowns, clutching candelabras; all these sinister men with deep, dark, terrible secrets. And just to drive it all home, the mold on Noémi’s bedroom wall is yellow and it moves, like the yellow wallpaper come to monstrous life.

But the true source of the gothic in Mexican Gothic — the awful force that creates restraint against which the gothic heroine must fight; the source of the rot — is colonialism. The Doyles came to El Triunfo to take the silver from its earth and have never cared that they exploited its people, or that they continue to do so still. Their only concern is personal enrichment. Howard refers to his former mine workers as “mulch.” To save herself and Catalina, Noémi must push back against the forces of an old imperial power — and against the creeping, insidious pleasure she knows it would bring her if she were to submit to it.

It’s the elegance with which Moreno-Garcia handles this metaphor that elevates Mexican Gothic above the level of didactic pastiche. This book is deliciously true to the gothic form, grotesque without becoming gross, and considered, always, in the way it thinks about power and its characters’ reactions to power. Read it with your lights on — and know that strange dreams might begin to haunt you, as they haunted Noémi.

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This Haunting New Bestseller Is Part du Maurier, Part del Toro

Silvia moreno-garcia’s mexican gothic is a thriller with more on its mind than just getting you to keep turning the pages..

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When I was a child, the neighborhood drugstore where I snuck out to buy candy also trafficked in another forbidden treat: a tall, rotating rack stocked with mass-market paperbacks, the covers of which mostly featured women in nightgowns fleeing from looming mansions by night . This was a type of genre fiction that flourished in the 1960s and ’70s and has entirely vanished since called the gothic. Our branch librarian informed me when I tried to check some out that I was too young to read such books, vastly increasing their glamor in my eyes. Eventually, though, I got my hands on a few, and while I remember enjoying them well enough, their predictability soon bored me.

Only years later, in school, would I read the literature that inspired these pulps and gain a full appreciation of the gothic mode. (There ought to be a name for this disorienting experience of encountering the genuine article only after a thorough exposure to its thin simulacrum, like visiting New Orleans for the first time after many childhood wanderings through New Orleans Square in Disneyland.) Some of the literary gothic’s foundational novels are acknowledged classics— Jane Eyre , Wuthering Heights — while others—most notably, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca —were unfairly diminished in reputation by their countless imitators and the prestige hit taken by any genre that’s particularly popular with women.

But truth be told, even those of us who love a high-end gothic novel must admit that many of the genre’s devices have lost their flavor. How many books can you read about inexperienced but scrappy young women (or, in the case of Rebecca, gormless ingenues) arriving in gloomy English country estates where dark secrets lurk behind moth-nibbled velvet drapes? Even this premise, once so delicious, can get stale. The genre’s palette is typically limited, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be—as Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic amply, deliriously, and gloriously demonstrates.

The setting, at first, is Mexico City, 1950. The heroine is Noemí Taboada, who, unlike the typically mousy gothic heroine, is as handsome, clever, and rich as Emma Woodhouse. The novel, narrated in the third person but limited to Noemí’s point of view, refers to her more than once as a “socialite,” an old-fashioned label I associate with newspapers—would anyone call herself this?—and signals that Mexican Gothic, in accord with its artless but absolutely on-point title, is not afraid to be a little bit trashy. A promising sign, indeed.

For me, gothic fiction will always be associated with the endless afternoons of a suburban childhood summer, a wedge of vicarious shadow injected in long, blank, bright days when there was nothing much to do and nowhere really to go. This pandemic summer is the ideal season for that kind of book, and Mexican Gothic is one, at least in the beginning. Noemí obeys her industrialist father’s request to check up on her newlywed cousin Catalina, whose husband has whisked her away to an old family mansion so high up in the mountains that despite its latitude, the place always seems to be swathed in a chilly mist. Catalina has been writing her uncle strange letters, accusing her husband, Virgil Doyle, of trying to poison her and raving about “these restless dead, these ghosts, fleshless things” that “whisper at night.”

When Noemí arrives at this house (dubbed, in accordance with Moreno-Garcia’s curiously literal naming approach, High Place), she finds such classic gothic character types as the unsympathetic middle-aged woman who runs the place; a pair of men, one darkly dangerous and alluring, the other more decent but less exciting; suspicious servants; and a creepy dying patriarch who, when he learns of Noemí’s plans to study anthropology at the university, begins spouting noxious ideas about race and eugenics. The Doyles monitor her time with Catalina and refuse to consult anyone about her cousin’s puzzling illness besides the longtime family physician, whom Noemí mistrusts. The place is obviously riddled with secrets, and our heroine, of course, resolves to dig them up.

But if Mexican Gothic begins like du Maurier, it veers a little before its midpoint into the territory of a Guillermo del Toro movie. (In a  recent Twitter thread , Moreno-Garcia attributed this similarity to a shared influence, the Mexican filmmaker Carlos Enrique Taboada, whose last name she gave to her heroine.) It’s an audacious and satisfying move, because while Moreno-Garcia lacks du Maurier’s gift for conjuring a hypnotic atmosphere, her skill with the baroque and hallucinatory is peerless. Noemí has a series of dreams in which she wanders the house, surrounded by clouds of golden spores and confronted by a woman in a yellow dress whose face has been replaced with a pulsing, featureless glow. This figure attempts to speak to her, despite not having a mouth, and “the woman made a noise, like the crunching of leaves, like the dripping of water onto a pond, like the buzzing of insects in the pitch-black darkness, and Noemí wished to press her hands against her ears, but she had no hands anymore.” Later, in another dream, she will feel that “the floor beneath her was wet and soft. It was a sore. A great sore she walked upon, and the walls were sores too. The wallpaper was peeling, revealing underneath sickly organs instead of brick or wooden boards.”

These are quintessential gothic concepts—female powerlessness and voicelessness, the house as body or psyche—but Moreno-Garcia turns them up to 11, as del Toro did with his own gothic film, 2015’s Crimson Peak . But bringing such florid intensity to the table is not Moreno-Garcia’s only technique for making the gothic more Mexican. The Doyles, fair and blue-eyed, implanted themselves outside the village of El Triunfo, running a silver mine with ruthless disregard for the local workers, whom they considered little better than livestock, until the mine, and the family’s fortunes, succumbed to a series of mysterious afflictions. One of their ancestors even imported earth from his native England (rather like Count Dracula, who arrived in England with a shipment of Transylvanian soil), so determined were they to preserve themselves as distinct from the land and people they came to exploit.

And so, while sustaining the gothic’s old-fashioned appeal, Moreno-Garcia converts its motifs into a supple metaphor for colonialism, which she conceives of as a kind of disease. Even Noemí’s intermittent attraction to the Doyles serves the author here as both a painful truth about the unruliness of desire and a covert dig at Mexico’s ruling class. Without giving too much away about what Noemí discovers at High Place—chances are you won’t figure it out in advance—I’ll say that it’s possible to read Mexican Gothic for its shiver-inducing surface pleasures alone, but you can also find much more should you choose to look for it. And no lazy afternoon spent reading it will ever feel wasted.

clock This article was published more than  3 years ago

‘Mexican Gothic’ is a creepy, intoxicating mystery that’s almost impossible to put down

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s “Mexican Gothic” is a feminist horror novel inspired by Gothic classics including “Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights.” It’s also a nod to fairy tales, though not the Disney versions. “Mexican Gothic’s” characters recall the macabre stories in which Cinderella’s sisters chop off their feet and Sleeping Beauty’s stepmother meets her fate in a barrel of snakes.

Like Moreno-Garcia’s widely praised 2019 novel “Gods of Jade and Shadow,” “Mexican Gothic” is also rooted in the ancient mythology of Mexico, where she was born. Its heroine is 22-year-old Noemí Taboada, a rich, flirty party girl living in Mexico City in 1950. There’s more to Noemí than her expensive clothes and penchant for Gauloises cigarettes. She wants to attend college and pursue a degree in anthropology.

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That’s a horror story for her parents, who want her to focus on finding a husband. But Noemí’s father promises she can continue her education if she first checks in on her cousin Catalina, who lives with her husband, Virgil, in his family’s ancestral home in the countryside. Catalina has written a letter in which she claims her husband is slowly poisoning her and that High Place, their home, “is sick with rot, stinks of decay, brims with every single evil and cruel sentiment.”

Noemí’s first glimpse of High Place is as melodramatic as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter’s first view of Manderley in Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca.” Noemí feels the ominous house “loomed over them like a great, quiet gargoyle.” Later, she thinks “it was the kind of thing she could imagine impressing her cousin: an old house atop a hill, with mist and moonlight, like an etching out of a Gothic novel.”

High Place is an ominous presence, and Moreno-Garcia, who is one of the science fiction and fantasy columnists for The Washington Post, uses its grim atmosphere to great effect. It’s a gloomy wreck filled with dusty antiques and oddly robotic servants. A snake motif garnishes fireplaces, rugs and furniture. Mold and fungus grow on everything.

Noemí discovers Catalina sleepy and confused. “There’re people in the walls,” Catalina says. “There’re people and there’re voices. I see them sometimes, the people in the walls. They’re dead.”

Soon, Noemí begins having nightmares and starts sleepwalking. The descriptions of her hallucinations are hypnotically poetic. At one point, she watches as the mold on the wall begins to move: “It rearranged itself into wildly eclectic patterns that reminded her of a kaleidoscope, shifting, changing. Instead of bits of glass reflected by mirrors it was an organic madness that propelled the mold into its dizzy twists and turns, creating swirls and garlands, dissolving, then reemerging.”

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Virgil and his creepfest of a family are equally disturbing. Noemí considers Virgil a “beastly” man hiding his true self behind a “veneer of wretched civility.” His younger cousin Francis is a “faint sketch of a man,” and worst of all is Howard Doyle, the family patriarch: “she thought he was a corpse, afflicted by the ravages of putrefaction, but he lived.” Noemí wants to escape with Catalina, but the house and its inhabitants have them spellbound.

“Mexican Gothic” drips with a miasma of dread for these captive women, especially after we learn what this strange family has in store for them. But this is a novel about powerful women. Not just the headstrong Noemí but also, surprisingly, Catalina, and Ruth, a dishonored ancestor whose own power may prove invaluable to their survival.

It’s as if a supernatural power compels us to turn the pages of the gripping “Mexican Gothic.” The true identity of the Doyles and the fate of these women is an intoxicating mystery that allows us, for a little while, to forget the horror story taking place in the real world during the summer of covid-19.

Carol Memmott  is a writer in Austin.

MEXICAN GOTHIC

By Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Del Rey. 320 pp. $27

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, mexican gothic.

In MEXICAN GOTHIC, Silvia Moreno-Garcia cuts to the quick of gothic horror, delivering a brilliant, page-turning romp that is as clever as it is chilling.

Noemí Taboada is a shrewd, smart, young socialite in Mexico City. Her inquisitive nature leads her to a life of vibrant parties mixed with academic pursuits, like anthropology. So when her father asks a strange favor of her in exchange for allowing her to enroll in a master’s program, she accepts. Her cousin, who recently married Englishman Virgil Doyle after a very brief engagement, has sent a troubling letter. In a distressed, uncharacteristic hand, Catalina claims that her new home is haunted and her husband is poisoning her. Virgil unequivocally dismisses her claims and dissuades Noemí’s father from inquiring further --- so he wants Noemí to visit, assess Catalina’s state and determine if she requires treatment.

And so Noemí ventures to High Place. The house, once a grand Victorian estate planted in the Mexican countryside, has fallen into more than disrepair. It’s rotting from the core. Mold spores creep up the silver gilt and oil portraits of the Doyle lineage. The entire house feels dank and tired, and the windows don’t open. The landscape outside is shrouded in perpetual mist and edged in vicious ravines.

"Thoroughly satisfying on every page and brimming with eerie, encroaching menace, MEXICAN GOTHIC is a pitch-perfect masterpiece."

Virgil and his family once had money from the silver mines they ran before a sickness took most of the Mexican miners. He knows very well that Catalina has money of her own. He’s as handsome as a statue, and just as cold. His cousin, Francis, is not so handsome --- and as weak-willed as Virgil is strong --- but is obviously enamored of Noemí. His mother, Florence, lays out strange, stringent and prohibitive rules for Noemí’s visit.

Virgil’s father, Howard Doyle, is the patriarch of the estate. He’s ancient, and his family and the hired help revolve around him and his needs. From the moment he meets Noemí, he’s unabashedly racist. He comments on how much darker she is than Catalina and launches into diatribes on overt eugenics. When a disgusted Noemí pushes back, Howard seems amused rather than abashed, spurred on by her resistance.

Catalina’s terror is even more palpable in person. But as Noemí tries to get to the bottom of her cousin’s disturbance, she begins to succumb to a similar haunting herself --- worsened by Virgil’s reassurances that she and Catalina are safe. As Noemí delves deeper into the mysteries shrouding High Place and the Doyles, she finds herself ensnared in a danger more sick and terrible than she could have imagined.

Moreno-Garcia delivers on every promise she makes with MEXICAN GOTHIC. She masterfully executes tropes of the genre while reinvigorating every single one, and Noemí makes for a deeply gratifying protagonist through it all. The book gets at the true terror of the world and positions a brilliant, passionate and impulsive heroine to fight it at its very core. The eldritch villain is the horrific reality of white supremacy and the monstrosity of insecure, self-righteous masculinity. Moreno-Garcia lays bare its willful, selfish violence, how it’s inextricable from western imperialism and rape culture, and as widely accepted, inescapable and built to thrive within our system of governance as law itself.

MEXICAN GOTHIC is a dark, seductive fairy tale --- magical, haunted and subversive on every level. Noemí is a savvy knight, Catalina is no damsel, and the castle is knowingly built on brown bodies, while the prince at the end has always been the hideous, ravening dragon and evil queen all at once.

Moreno-Garcia is in conversation with Lovecraft here, rather than simply channeling him, and she reveals his intrinsic racist, white supremacist themes for the horror that they are. There’s also resonance of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and the wondrous, strange fruiting bodies of Jeff VanderMeer, all blended with a Victorian ghost story. Moreno-Garcia’s writing is stylish and immersive, deftly evoking an atmosphere of glamour gone to rot, of the screaming toxicity of masculinity couched in quiet, familiar propriety.

The book is truly terrifying, but even though it emphasizes that racist, imperialist evil has always been cyclical, it is still beautifully hopeful. It never loses sight of how brown women can save themselves and each other, even as it indicts how evil this system is that puts them in threatened positions.

Thoroughly satisfying on every page and brimming with eerie, encroaching menace, MEXICAN GOTHIC is a pitch-perfect masterpiece.

Reviewed by Maya Gittelman on July 2, 2020

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

• Publication Date: June 15, 2021
• Genres: Fantasy , Fiction , Gothic , Horror
• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey
• ISBN-10: 052562080X
• ISBN-13: 9780525620808

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Book Review: MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In 1950s Mexico, a headstrong socialite embarks on an adventure to save her cousin from a questionable marriage, a potentially haunted gothic mansion, and some twisted family secrets. (And also a lot of mushrooms.)

Title: Mexican Gothic Author: Silvia Moreno-Garcia Genre: Fantasy, Horror Publisher: Del Rey Publication Date: June 30, 2020 Hardcover: 320 pages

An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . . From the author of  Gods of Jade and Shadow  comes “a terrifying twist on classic gothic horror” ( Kirkus Reviews ) set in glamorous 1950s Mexico. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.    Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.  And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone

How did I get this book: Purchased

Format : Hardcover

Noemí Taboada knows how to work a crowd. Rich, well-connected, young, and beautiful, Noemí knows how to fluster, flirt, and manipulate others in high society–though, truly, Noemí craves the freedom to follow her passions. Unfortunately for Noemí, earning a master’s degree in anthropology or perfecting her ability to play the piano are not skills that her parents want her to pursue–making a strategic marriage to strengthen the family’s business, name, and prosperity is the Taboada top priority. Family is everything.

So, when Noemí’s father receives a letter from his newlywed niece Catalina, claiming that her new husband and his family and the house itself are trying to poison her, he is quick to act forcefully and discretely. He tasks Noemí with going to El Triunfo to ascertain the situation and make sure Catalina is safe–in return, he will give Noemí his permission to apply for university. Noemí doesn’t need much urging–Catalina is a beloved cousin, and Noemí quickly sets off to help.

What Noemí discovers is a sleepy, forgotten mountain town–after the silver mine dried up, and a string of tragedies, the entire economy of El Triunfo collapsed. And sitting atop a treacherous winding road looking down at town is High Place–a gothic English manor transported to Mexico decades earlier by Howard Doyle, Catalina’s new father-in-law. It is here, in High Place, where Noemí is bound to stay to help her cousin. High Place is large and once proud, but now a slowly rotting relic of a different time–it is a cold, inhospitable kind of home that immediately sets Noemí on edge.

The Doyle family, however, is perhaps even more unnerving than their mansion. There is Catalina’s handsome but coldly reserved husband, Virgil, whom Noemí has met before yet knows nothing about. Florence, Virgil’s aunt, who is stern, gray, and seems to hate Noemí on sight. Florence’s son and Virgil’s cousin, Francis, is the first to meet Noemí and seems to be the only friendly soul in High Place–though Noemí suspects he’s hiding something. And, Howard Doyle himself, patriarch of the Doyle line–a decrepit, ancient man (who espouses arguments for eugenics and remarks on Noemí’s dark coloring and beauty upon their first meeting).

The Doyles insist that Catalina is just suffering from tuberculosis–their private doctor is personally caring for her, and that her hallucinations and psychosis are common side effects to her medication. Noemí, seeing Catalina is a pale version of her former self, is not so sure.

What Noemí knows is this: something is wrong in High Place. And she is determined to understand what is happening to her cousin–even if the same affliction begins to take hold of Noemí herself.

The proverbial cat is out of the bag regarding Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s work; I have long been a fan of her short fiction ( The Prime Meridian is absolutely excellent) and novels ( Gods of Jade and Shadow, Signal to Noise , etc). Moreno-Garcia is able to fluidly write in science fiction, fantasy, and horror, blending magic with urban legends and folklore, transforming old tropes into something new with her sharp characters’ perspectives. Mexican Gothic is no exception; it is a proper gothic novel, resplendent with sublime imagery, family secrets, and yes, even romance. But add to that traditional framework a 1950s Mexico setting and the tensions and interpretations of race and class–this is what distinguishes Mexican Gothic from every other recent retelling of haunted houses on hills and modernist Brontës.

As with any work of horror, and especially gothic horror, much emphasis is placed on the strength of characters–both heroes and villains. Although it’s hard initially to relate to Noemí’s cynical approach to others, quickly she becomes more tangible and less of a persona, as she tries to navigate the oddness and wrongness of the Doyle household. As we learn more about Noemí and her relationship with Catalina, she becomes even more sympathetic and real–Moreno-Garcia creates a character who is definitely not perfect or passive, and Noemí is forced to confront her own darkness by book’s end. If Noemí is a heroine worth rooting for, there’s also the horrifying specter of Howard Doyle and his son, Virgil, in their calculated cruelty. There are secrets upon secrets, layers of desire, deception, and predatory, terrifying, power in the Doyle line–but for all of that cruelty and darkness, there is also hope that not every cycle needs to be repeated. (Francis is proof of that.)

Arguably the more important element in gothic fiction is the setting itself–and once again, Moreno-Garcia nails it. A town destroyed by a silver mine and greed, now forgotten by the rest of the world, El Triunfo’s remote decrepitude is achingly real. But High Place is the true star of this book, with its molding wallpaper, musty hallways, and almost complete lack of any technological upgrades, like electrical lighting. The house pulsates and squirms, and Moreno-Garcia’s use of mushroom imagery, the overripe sickly sweet rot that pervades High Place and Noemí’s mind, is absolutely fantastic. As you read the book, there are many possible explanations that start to make themselves known–are Catalina and Noemí dealing with some kind of environmental agent shaping their thoughts? Is it something more supernatural and insidious? Is it both, or neither?

Hint: the “reveal” and subsequent climactic final act is absolute bloody perfection, but I won’t spoil that for you.

Don’t just take my word for it; read it yourself and find out.

Rating: 8 – BRILLIANT

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Thea James is one half of the maniacal duo behind The Book Smugglers. She is Filipina-American, but grew up in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Japan. A full-time book nerd who works in publishing for her day job, Thea currently resides in Astoria, Queens with her partner and rambunctious cat. COOKING FOR WIZARDS, WARRIORS & DRAGONS (available August 31, 2021) is her first cookbook.

That’s wonderful “Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son”

Cameron Ashmore

Hmm sounds good.

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Book Review: Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic is a skillful blend of romance, history, mystery, and horror. But as I read the book, I found myself wishing Moreno-Garcia had incorporated (minor) elements from an additional genre.

Mexican Gothic takes place in 1950. The tale begins in Mexico City, where our protagonist Noemí Taboada—a flighty student vaguely interested in anthropology and “easy, shallow men”—is informed by her father that her older cousin Catalina has written a disturbing letter that raises doubts about her mental state. Noemí’s father charges her with visiting her cousin and ascertaining whether her nascent marriage into the Doyle family can be salvaged (and thus prevent a scandal). The Doyles aren’t to be trusted, though. They made their fortune running a silver mine near the remote mountain town of El Triunfo. But the mine has been closed for more than thirty years, and the Doyles have fallen on hard times. They may be prioritizing Catalina’s money over her well-being.

Here’s where the history comes in. As Moreno-Garcia notes in her afterword, colonialism and its emphasis on extractive capitalism thread through much of the novel. The Doyles hail from England; the mine was previously operated by the Spanish; both entities exploited the locals to acquire their riches. Howard, the Doyle patriarch, also ascribes to eugenics, viewing mestizos like Noemí as members of an inferior, “disharmonic race” that nevertheless possess “splendid attributes” such as a “robustness of body.”

But mystery quickly rises to the fore once Noemí arrives in El Triunfo. What happened to Catalina to make her think the walls of High Place, the Doyle’s dilapidated mansion, can speak to her? Why did the miners of El Triunfo frequently die of a mysterious illness that caused ranting and convulsions? And at the height of the mine’s prosperity, what motivated Howard’s daughter to shoot him along with several other Doyles and herself? Noemí investigates these questions and others with the reluctant help of Francis, yet another Doyle.

In terms of romance, Francis represents a potential love interest, albeit an unlikely one; he’s awkward and studious—nothing like Noemí’s usual type. Virgil, Howard’s son and Catalina’s handsome but haughty husband, is more in keeping with Noemí’s taste in men. But her attraction to Virgil is tinged with a danger that stretches beyond the thrill of lusting after her cousin’s partner.

Yet at its core, Mexican Gothic is a horror story. High Place is very much a haunted house, looming like a “great, quiet gargoyle” with windows that look to Noemí like “lidless, eager eyes.” It contains rot of multiple kinds, disfiguring the land and conjuring dark dreams in which it appears to guests as a decaying organism with sores in place of walls and “sickly organs instead of brick or wooden boards.” Moreno-Garcia has a talent for peppering her descriptions with this sort of imaginative grossness, and the story only gets stranger as it goes.

So what did I find lacking? As Moreno-Garcia acknowledges, the book is partially meant to be a “romp through a trove of Gothic tropes.” It’s certainly that! But I wonder if deviating slightly further from those tropes and mixing in a dash of fantasy might have made for a more satisfying brew. I’m not suggesting she should have added anything on the order of elves and dragons; Mexican Gothic certainly doesn’t need to change its fundamental nature by injecting a Tolkienesque helping of magic and mythical creatures. Thematically, though, Noemí’s character development might have been more compelling if she’d progressed along a mini-hero’s journey. She evolves, but not in a way that requires exercising much agency or making particularly difficult choices. Virgil is obviously toxic, with little to recommend him even before Noemí learns more about his intended place in the Doyle’s twisted lineage—he never feels like a viable suitor. And the book’s resolution only minimally depends on Noemi’s actions to that point. She doesn’t capitalize on a weakness her sleuthing uncovered or apply a new skill honed during her time at High Place; the ending happens to her as much as it’s driven by anything she accomplished.

So all in all, I enjoyed A God of Jade and Shadows (one of Moreno-Garcia’s earlier works, which incorporates quite a bit of fantasy) more than Mexican Gothic . But the latter’s craft kept me engaged, and I look forward to reading more of Moreno-Garcia’s fiction—regardless of how many genres it does or doesn’t mash together.

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Millions of visitors. Thousands of exhibits. One fiendish killer.

Neva’s goals at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago are simple. Enjoy the spectacle—perhaps the greatest the United States has ever put on. (The world’s fair to end all world’s fairs!) Perform in the exposition’s Algerian Theatre to the best of her abilities. And don’t be found out as a witch.

Easy enough … until the morning she looks up in the Theatre and sees strangely marked insects swarming a severed hand in the rafters.

"... a wild ride sure to please lovers of supernatural historical mysteries." – Publishers Weekly

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Mexican Gothic

By silvia moreno-garcia.

Book review and synopsis for Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a gothic horror story set in 1950s Mexico.

In Mexican Gothic , Noemí Taboada is a young and wealthy socialite, who receives a concerning letter from her newly-married cousin, Catalina. Catalina has written asking for help. She sees ghosts and believes that her husband, Virgil, is poisoning her. Virgil Doyle comes from a once-wealthy family that has run out of money.

Noemí heads up to High Place, a mountainside mansion where the Doyles reside. Before long, she starts having visions, hallucinations and dreams of a golden woman in the walls. Meanwhile, in town, rumors abound about the cursed Doyle family and their sordid past. In this atmospheric and creepy tale, Noemí finds herself faced with the secrets hidden in this inhospitable place and among this strange family.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

Noemí Taboada is a 22-year-old wealthy socialite. She goes to see her cousin Catalina, who is living with her husband's family in the High Place, a mansion located near a small village in the mountains. Catalina has written asking for help. She sees ghosts and believes that her husband, Virgil, is poisoning her. Virgil Doyle comes from a once-wealthy family that has run out of money. Noemí worries that the Doyles are after Catalina's bank account.

At the High Place, Catalina has a fever and is ranting about ghosts in the walls. She is being treated by the family doctor, Dr. Arthur Cummins. Noemí is given limited access to Catalina. Catalina asks Noemí to secretly pick up medicine (a tincture) from the town healer, Marta Duval. But the tincture causes a seizure, and Noemí's visits with Catalina are limited further.

Noemí eventually learns that High Place was built by the Doyle brothers, Leland and Howard (Virgil's father). They also re-opened the town's old silver mines. Howard's first wife was Agnes, who died. Howard remarried Agnes's sister, Alice, and they had two children, Ruth and Virgil. Meanwhile, Leland married Dorothy, and they had Michael and Florence.

Ruth fell in love with a man who mysteriously disappeared. Instead, Ruth was ordered to marry Michael. Before the wedding, she drugs and shoots up the household. Leland, Dorothy, Michael and Alice were killed. Then, Ruth killed herself. The mines were closed around that time. Florence later married and had Francis. But her husband, Richard, went raving mad and was found dead in a ravine. Now, the only Doyles left are Howard, Florence, Francis and Virgil.

As Noemí stays in the house, she starts to dream of ghosts, have strange visions involving the Foyles and she sees a golden woman climbing out from the walls. Noemí forges a friendship with Francis, but he warns her not to trust the rest of them. Virgil is charming but seems predatory. Florence is strict and scolds Noemí constantly. And Howard is old, controlling and a eugenics enthusiast. There are also rumors that the family is cursed. In addition to the family's sordid history, there is a sickness that has at times caused fevers, madness and death in many of the family's workers and staff.

As Noemí's dreams get worse and she starts sleepwalking, and she decides to leave High Place for now. At that point, the Doyles reveal they have no intention of letting her go. They tell her the truth, that Howard discovered a long time ago a mushroom that had the ability to heal and extend life. It is especially potent within the Doyle's bloodline, which is why they have an incestuous family history. This house and the air in it is infused with the mushroom's spores, which has grown around and under it, forming a symbiotic relationship with the house and its inhabitants. It also allows a level of control over people that have inhaled its spores.

The spores have an ability to collect and store memories. Noemí's visions are actually the family's collective memories, which they call "the gloom." Howard sacrificed his first wife, Agnes, through a ritual that turned her into the mind and hub for the spores to spring forth from. Howard is actually around three hundred years old. He has the power to transmute his memories into the gloom and then live on in another's body. He's been doing this with family members to preserve the potency of his powers.

The Doyles have lately been branching out in terms of marriages (Catalina, Richard, etc.) because their inbreeding is causing infertility. Outsiders react differently to the spores, with some getting fevers and dying (the sickness that killed their workers). But Noemí seems to highly complementary, plus she has the wealth they need to replenish their fortunes. They want Noemí to marry Francis.

Francis knows this is wrong, and he tells Noemí that Marta's tincture can lessen the spores' control over people. Francis and Noemí devise a plan for her to go along with the plan temporarily, as he sneaks Noemí and Catalina the tincture. After the wedding ceremony, they want to transmute Howard into Francis. However, Catalina stabs Howard in the eye with a scalpel, and Francis takes Florences gun and shoots her.

They escape into the family crypt, and Noemí sees that the body of Agnes is down there with spores sprouting from her body and her mind still acting as the hub. Virgil stops them. Virgil says he knew about them continuing to take the tincture, but he allowed it because he wanted them to injure Howard. That way, Virgil can take control of the spores. Instead, Francis fights with him, and Noemí lights the body of Agnes on fire. Catalina, Noemí and Francis escape into town with the house ablaze behind them.

The book sends with the police and Noemí's father headed over to the town to check things out. Francis has a dream about the house healing itself and him inside it, with it emerging stronger than ever. He wonders if he should kill himself. However, Francis and Noemí kiss, and they are hopeful they can build a better future.

For more detail, see the full Chapter-by-Chapter Summary .

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Book Review

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia came out recently, and I’ve been enjoying its creepy delights this past week. I liked it, though it may not be for everyone. It’s a Gothic horror novel set in Mexico in the 1950s.

Mexican Gothic is a true Gothic horror novel, with equal emphasis on both the “Gothic” and “horror” parts of that equation. In terms of the Gothic style, it borrows from other classic Gothic works such as Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper , but branches off into a story that is very much distinct from its predecessors.

If you’ve read either of those, you’ll recognize some familiar story beats early on, but rest assured that Mexican Gothic is definitely not a rehash and stands firmly on its own. And the horror aspects get amped up as the story goes along.

Moreno-Garcia has penned an atmospheric and very horrific tale. The beginning starts off not quite slow-moving exactly, but I would describe the “action” to be a little more subtle and meant to build suspense. Instead of wild, dramatic occurrences, it offers bits and pieces of intriguing information at the onset, though the plot ratchets up quite a bit towards the end.

Throughout the novel, Noemí tries desperately to reason through seemingly inexplicable occurrences and the Doyle family’s cursed history. I loved that Moreno-Garcia infuses her book with enough research to make her characters sound informed about the topics they talk about, without slowing the narrative down.

Mexican Gothic draws in many of the classic Gothic hallmarks, lots of foggy views, a creaky house, candlelit hallways and a sexually charged atmosphere. If this sounds like something you’re into, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed with this book, though there is an equal if not greater emphasis on the horror aspects of it as well.

In general, I found the plot pretty solid, though there were aspects that I think could have been a little neater or explained better. I was very surprised by the ending, but in a good way. It’s creative and novel in a way that I think horror fans will love. If you’re a Stephen King fan, for example, I think you’d feel perfectly at home reading this.

Read it or Skip it?

Mexican Gothic is precisely what it advertises itself to be, which is a work of Gothic horror. So, whether or not you’ll like it is partially dependent on whether you like a) Gothic literature and b) horror novels.

Both aspects of this book are well done. But while I love the Gothic aspects of it, horror has never been my favorite genre. I still enjoyed the book quite a bit, and I think Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a really good writer, but I think this book is not necessarily going to be for everyone.

If you think these genres might be up your alley, Mexican Gothic probably a great pick for you. It’s atmospheric, well written, and a delightfully horrific ride. Read it if you think Daphne du Maurier meets Stephen King sound like a fun time for you.

What do you think? It Mexican Gothic a book you’d consider reading? See Mexican Gothic on Amazon.

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This sounds something like I’d love to read! It sounds intriguing enough. Not sure about the horror part though. I don’t read much horror. Great review, Jennifer!

honestly its a bit heavy on the horror bit, but if you like stephen king-type stuff I’d say that is what this reminded me of

Great review! Might check the book out, have been hearing a lot about it.

thank you! hope you like it if you get a chance to read it!

The gothic side of things appeals to me, not so much the horror and I have been seeing a lot of this book lately, love the cover so I might check this one out.

Book Review | Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

From the publisher: An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . 

Silvia Moreno-Garcia has written quite a few novels, but this is the first of hers that I’ve read. I’m glad I read it, and it was a quick read, but it wasn’t blow-your-mind-amazing. It was predictable, pulling from many of the gothic foremothers and forefathers, but that set this up to be a softer texture of spooky. I wish I would have saved it for a cool fall evening, so if you’re reading this and I end up convincing you to read Mexican Gothic , please do yourself a favor and wait until it’s at least below 65 degrees and you have hot cocoa and flannels handy.

Noem í Taboada is in her early twenties, a chic socialite who glams her way through parties and keeps only the best cigarettes in her purse. After her father receives a frantic “help me” letter from Catalina, Noem í’s cousin, she heads to High Place in El Triunfo, a mountainous region of Mexico that Moreno-Garcia based on Hidalgo (specifically Mineral del Monte, according to the author’s notes on Goodreads). The inhabitants of the house are peculiar–Catalina’s husband is intimidating yet supposedly charming, his father is so ancient he’s described as reminding Noem í of a mummy, the service workers hardly speak, there’s no talking allowed during dinner, no going into town, and it’s just all around an unsettling situation that’s exacerbated as Noem í begins to experience nightmarish sleepwalking episodes. The youngest of the bunch, Francis, seems to be the only one who doesn’t make Noem í feel crazy for feeling like something is off about the Doyle family.

It’s hard to go into much detail without giving away spoilers. Every detail feels as though it’s an obvious clue to help the reader solve this “big secret” about the house and the Doyle family, so it’s kind of easy to call the ending before you’re even halfway through. Noem í talks people into giving her pieces of the Doyle family history throughout, and early in the novel she’s told: “He wanted the house built quickly and he wanted a great garden, in the English style, with rose beds. He even brought boxes filled with earth from Europe to make sure the flowers would take.” Sound familiar? Little details that harken back to early horror and gothic fiction are sprinkled so liberally throughout that they eventually feel as though they aren’t actually adding any value to the novel.

The predictability early on wouldn’t be such a bummer if the characters had been complex enough to sustain interest through to the end, but they were pretty basic cookie-cutter archetypes, and the writing itself can feel lazy at times. A prime example of this is the way Noem í’s thought process is explained: “She had a vague thought that it would also be easier to run out of the room if she was standing. She wasn’t sure why she thought this.” Maybe she thought this because the man looming over her had already been portrayed as a slimeball on the cusp of violence? Another example: one of the recurring images throughout the house is a snake eating its own tail, or if you’re not looking closely, circles. Noem í thinks, “It could be that they were talking in circles. And wouldn’t that be ironic? Circles.” Dear every author who has ever written or ever will write: please stop over-explaining to your reader. Stop it. It makes for some vapid-sounding characters.

For those who enjoy Daphne du Marier, Shirley Jackson (I know, I’ve brought her up in just about every review I’ve written), Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Emily Brontë, etc., you may find this one entertaining, but just be prepared to have your plot twists spelled out from the beginning.

Mexican Gothic  is available for checkout from the Galesburg Public Library.

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Mexican Gothic Hardcover – June 30, 2020

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• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Del Rey
• Publication date June 30, 2020
• Dimensions 6.35 x 1.03 x 9.38 inches
• ISBN-10 0525620788
• ISBN-13 978-0525620785
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey; First Edition (June 30, 2020)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0525620788
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0525620785
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.35 x 1.03 x 9.38 inches
• #213 in Gothic Fiction
• #321 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
• #376 in Magical Realism

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About the author

Silvia moreno-garcia.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of Silver Nitrate, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Mexican Gothic, and many other books. She has won the Locus, British Fantasy and World Fantasy awards.

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COVID-19 has made us more aware than ever of the importance of the spaces we call our own. That makes this the perfect moment to read the uncanny, absorbing Mexican Gothic, a tale about the kind of location in which you most definitely wouldn’t want to shelter in place.

Wealthy socialite Noemí Taboada had planned to spend her summer break from university enjoying herself in Mexico City, but when her father receives a disturbing, frantic letter from her cousin Catalina, he sends Noemí to bring her home. It will be no easy task. Catalina hastily married Virgil Doyle just a few months before and he has taken her to High Place, a distant house nestled among steep mountains in the Mexican countryside. Noemí’s not sure she will succeed in her assignment - Catalina gave her family little time to mingle with her groom, but the impression  Noemí received was of a cold, domineering man who will not easily give in to her supplications to let heiress Catalina return to Mexico City .

When she arrives, Noemí realizes that High Place is even more isolated than she had feared. It is situated far above a remote, deeply impoverished town, and the sole road there is overgrown, and flanked by treacherous ravines. The silver mine, the source of the family’s once legendary wealth, is closed and High Place itself has fallen into disrepair. An endless, cold mist surrounds the abode, and even though it’s the 1950s, there are no electric lights, only oil lamps and candelabra. The rooms are musty, the wall paper moldy, the stonework crumbling. But that is nothing compared to the weirdness of the home’s inhabitants.

Florence, Virgil’s aunt, is the housekeeper. She shows Noemí to her room and advises her that there is no smoking in the house - and no talking at meal times. She is also Catalina's nursemaid and is openly hostile to Noemí’s wish to visit with her cousin, insisting Catalina needs rest.  She grudgingly allows Noemí to speak briefly with her, a conversation that is spent with Catalina advising Noemí that the ghosts which haunt the manor are very real.  Leaving that room, Noemí tries to get Virgil to agree to let her take Catalina away for psychiatric treatment but he insists that Catalina is improving under the care of the family doctor and just needs time to recover from a recent bout of tuberculosis. Noemi finds this patently ridiculous as tuberculosis doesn’t cause hallucinations or paranoia, and attempts  to speak to the vacuous servants, hoping they can tell her what is happening but they refuse to say anything more than that they are busy and don’t have time to speak to her.

The strangeness of the day is capped by an awkward silent evening meal which is made more bizarre when at the end they are joined by Howard Doyle, Virgil’s father and the patriarch of the clan. He shatters the quiet of the dinner table by engaging Noemí in conversation, and his fascination with eugenics - and her heritage in particular - makes her deeply uneasy. She is grateful to escape his company and take what little comfort she can in the privacy of her own dreary, decaying room but the creepiness of the situation follows her there, too. She has nightmares of a glowing faceless woman and mushrooms which sprout from the wall. Morning brings little relief, as she wanders a house which looks as macabre in the watery daylight that trickles in past the deep fog as it does in the candlelight. She’s not sure how much help she can be to the clearly imprisoned Catalina under the circumstances, but surprisingly, she finds an ally in Virgil’s cousin, Francis. A quiet, pale young man, he is the only one who speaks of escaping the house, and who shows concern for Catalina. But he seems as trapped in High Place as she has begun to fear she is.

The centerpiece of any good gothic is the setting and High Place, with its chilling, atmospheric, desolate location is perfect. From the moment Noemí first sets foot in the house, the reader is transported to an other-worldly, sinister locale where danger seems to lurk in the very air. The author does a fantastic job of transfusing a lurking foreboding into every moment of her text. Even when nothing overtly strange is happening, there is this lingering, delicious sense of impending doom which seems to hover over the house, waiting for its moment.

The second most important factor to any gothic is the heroine and Noemí is a fantastic one. She’s strong, resourceful and resilient. Her stubborn refusal to abandon her cousin to whatever bizarre plan Virgil has for her is admirable and her clever wit, cheery, cheeky demeanor and kind nature all make her an absolute delight to root for. I liked that she wasn’t a wide-eyed innocent but had a worldly glamour. She drinks, smokes, dances, and at school, she is renowned for being able to have a good time. Her lively spirits and strong personality make her a pleasant change from the typical guileless gals who people these kinds of stories.

The author does provide us with the requisite ingénue but it is Francis who plays that role here, and his sweet, wholesome sincerity and shy insecurity quickly endear him to both the reader and Noemí. There is a romance here but it is a very subtle one, with our bold, brash heroine falling slowly for the far gentler, more serious - and mysterious -  hero. As in most gothics, the love story is partly an intellectual exercise as the heroine must decide if she can trust anyone - even the man she is falling in love with - given the situation she finds herself in.

The plot here is standard fare for this genre. There is a damsel in distress, in this case Catalina, and a sinister, brooding but exceedingly handsome man (Virgil) who appears to be up to no good. Logic and instinct are often at war in these books, with a practical explanation available to explain all the misfortunes and oddities that occur but with intuition pointing the heroine - and therefore the reader - towards the more portentous, malignant, emotive, yet seemingly unlikely resolution. Ms. Moreno-Garcia does a wonderful job of balancing these two opposing forces within her novel as she takes us to the inevitable explosive conclusion.

One point of warning. There are several dream sequences which are disturbing and feature depictions of sexual assault. These are in no way depicted as romantic, but as forced and nightmarish. The rapes occur only in dreams, and are not graphically portrayed but I did wish to advise readers that they are present and involve some dark, rather disquieting, undertones.

Mexican Gothic is exactly what the title promises - a thrilling, spooky story set in a unique location. I recommend it to anyone who enjoys this genre.

Buy it at: Amazon , Audible , or your local independent bookstore

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Sensuality:  Kisses

Publication Date:  06/2020

Review Tags:  1950s AoC Gothic Mexico PoC

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Book Review: Mexican Gothic

West Lafayette Public Library Director Nick Schenkel reviews Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "Mexican Gothic," a supernatural horror set in 1950's Mexico.

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In “The Familiar,” the blockbuster fantasist conjures a world of mystical intrigue and romance.

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Danielle Trussoni is the author of seven books. Her new novel, “The Puzzle Box,” will be published this fall.

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THE FAMILIAR, by Leigh Bardugo

For those unacquainted with Catholic demonology, a familiar, or “familiar spirit,” as the phrase shows up in the Bible, is an otherworldly creature indentured to a master, usually whoever’s summoned it — a witch or necromancer or, in the case of Aladdin, a lucky rube who finds a bottle in need of a shine.

In Leigh Bardugo’s richly drawn novel of magic and eternal love “The Familiar,” the Aladdin of the story is Luzia, a scullion girl working for fallen nobility in 16th-century Spain. Spells and enchantments come to Luzia with ease, initially manifesting as small remedies to household gaffes: A burned loaf of bread is suddenly edible; a ripped seam repairs itself. She’s wildly gifted, but has little control of her abilities.

Enter Guillén Santángel, a familiar bound to serve Victor de Paredes, an ambitious tradesman known throughout Madrid for his astonishing luck. The de Paredes family has owned Santángel for three generations, employing him as an invaluable henchman, fixer and bringer of otherworldly good fortune. Known as El Alacrán, the scorpion, Santángel is an indomitable force with a voice like “ashes gone cold” who looks “at once beautiful and like he was dying, as if a sheet had been laid over a particularly handsome corpse.” When de Parades selects Luzia to compete as his “holy champion” in a torneo of magic at the luxurious La Casilla, a contest with life-or-death stakes, Santángel is enlisted to guide her. In the process, he becomes her protector, mentor and friend.

Luzia, described by one character as a wolf who has “taken the shape of a girl,” makes for an unlikely sorceress. She lacks formal education, and is as ignorant of her potential as she is of her origins. Luzia’s ancestors were, it turns out, converso s, Jews forced to convert to Catholicism but still considered “the embodiment of everything the Inquisition reviled.” Although her parents are dead, Luzia’s aunt has taught her the “precious, perilous scraps of language” that form the basis of her spells, a music she hears but doesn’t fully understand. At La Casilla, Luzia must hide her origins and her intelligence. She dresses with prim severity in a plain black dress and a white ruff like a Renaissance-era Coco Chanel, hoping to seem less threatening.

Luzia may disguise herself, but her talent shatters any hope that she will go unnoticed. She’s a sensation from the first, drawing the ire of ruthless competitors. Navigating the torneo ’s Machiavellian politics is no easy feat, and it doesn’t help that she’s falling for Santángel. He’s pretty hard to resist. Equals in magic and subterfuge, they are both trapped in their own ways. He, too, is lonely; immortality has nearly killed him, leaving him to forget the “pleasure of warm skin, conversation, the glimmering of connection.” Their growing intimacy forms a bond that will save them both.

Bardugo, whose Gothic fiction includes “ Ninth House ” and the Y.A. novels “ Shadow and Bone ” and “Six of Crows,” is perfectly at home in the 16th century. Her prose mirrors the Baroque setting, her sentences lush and embroidered with pearls. Subplots proliferate, characters appear and retreat, and points of view shift from one person to the next, creating a panopticon around Luzia and Santángel. Reading Bardugo is an immersive, sensual experience: There are orange-blossom scented dreams, jewel-encrusted velvet dresses, fabrics dyed “with turmeric and berries from Persia more purple than a bruise,” a pomegranate’s “perfect glossy seeds, begging to be eaten.” One can’t help sinking into Luzia and Santángel’s world and wishing never to leave.

THE FAMILIAR | By Leigh Bardugo | Flatiron Books | 400 pp. | $29.99

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