Genre: Gothic, Historical | Rep: brown Mexican mc
Trigger Warnings: cousin incest (mentioned), gore, rape attempt (on page), cannibalism, talk of eugenics
As a latine who has a deep love for anything gothic this book means a lot. If you’re a fan of the genre like me you will feel right at home with the references.
“Beneath her the floorboards pulsed too; a heart, alive and knowing.“
But it’s very easy to fall in love with this story even if you’re not exactly a fan of Gothic. The main character, Noemí, is smart, flirtatious, stubborn and so much fun, it’s impossible not to like her. Her narration just works, it flows.
She’s a contrast in the dark house she moves into to investigate her cousin’s well being after she married a stranger, Virgil. The house is owned by Virgil’s family for generations and the entire family lives together, all set in their old ways, particularities and habits. She’s a foreign organism thrown into a meticulously constructed environment.
I think Silvia Moreno-Garcia did a great job writing horror, there was a sense of unease and foreboding from the very start. It’s also a deeply atmospheric read, the descriptions of decay and settings immerse the reader in its disturbing world.
“She could picture this same graveyard once upon a time in a tidier state , with carefully tended shrubs and flower beds, but now it was a realm of weeds and tall grasses, the vegetation threatening to swallow the place whole. The tombstones were blanketed with moss, and mushrooms sprouted by the graves. It was a picture of melancholy.”
Here’s the board I created for it because i had to.
It has all the gothic elements to make this a gothic classic: the newly-wed woman married to the mysterious man with a secret past, the heroine being gaslighted into believing she’s crazy from witnessing supernatural events, the setting: isolated mountain region, an old mansion (bonus point for being in ruins), gloomy graveyards etc; a sense of entrapment, the house as a metaphor for women’s oppression, a man in a position of power being domineering, nightmares and hallucinations as a tool of foreshadowing, and even a slight exploration of sexuality.
It also has huge influences from The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. After all, when you’re trapped in a house for too long, as quaratine has shown us, it’s only natural to go down in a spiral of thoughts you hadn’t taken before. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen my bedroom walls’ painting changing one or two times if I stared too long. It’s only natural. Right? Right?
You can easily draw parallels from the slow descent into madness, women being denied psychiatric help, men of science making women believe their treatment is the only correct one (but said treatment possibly making their symptoms worse?), and of course, the wallpaper. Maybe it’s sentient. Maybe they’ve gone crazy. Who knows.
I want to highlight that yes, Mexican Gothic has all the references and all the things we all love about the genre, but it’s very much it’s own thing. It managed to honor gothic literature while also being original. It contains plant-based horror, fairytale references, pseudoscience and so much more.
You have all the elements I previously mentioned but with Mexican setting and folklore, a plot that takes its own format throughout the book and, most importantly, a Latine perspective and a woman of colour as the leading lady. The first time we meet the (European) family her cousin married into, more precisely the father in law, Noemí describes him in such an ugly way she transforms his whiteness into a monster itself. That’s the story.
There’s a constant theme of superiority and eugenics. An european family who think themselves gods because of their bloodline
Mexican Gothic is about folklore and gothic storytelling, but behind all that its also a deep analysis of racism.
GHOSTLY READS 