You Should Read MEXICAN GOTHIC
“She dreamed that the door opened and in walked Howard Doyle, slowly, each of his steps like the weight of iron, making the boards creak and the walls rumble.”
-
According to my husband, it’s impossible to buy books for me because I’ve read everything (not true!). Luckily, the kind booksellers at Books are Awesome in Parker suggested Mexican Gothic when he visited to find me a birthday present. I figured I’d pay it forward with some recommendations of my own.
If you want to read Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, there are a few things you’ll need:
*Chilly, overcast weather
*A candle or two
*Thunderstorms (can substitute with fog and/or mist)
*An oversized sweater
*Maybe some cigarettes, as props
But don’t worry: If you can’t recreate the atmosphere of High Place, the deteriorating mansion lording over a Mexican mountain town, you will still enjoy Mexican Gothic. The book opens as Noemí Taboada is departing a costume party with Hugo, her man-of-the-moment. She’s a modern 1950s Mexican woman, carefully balancing having a good time with staying in her father’s good graces. According to him, fun should be had “only as a way to obtain a husband” (6). Her father summons her from the party after receiving an unsettling letter from Noemí’s recently married cousin, Catalina. In the letter, Catalina writes incoherently of a house that “stinks with decay, brims with every single evil and cruel sentiment” (7). By the end of the first chapter, Noemí sets off for El Triunfo to rescue her cousin. The stakes are clear and high: Catalina needs Noemí because she has no other family, and Noemí needs to follow her father’s orders so he will let her study anthropology at the National University.
Once she reaches El Triunfo, the pacing slows. Many Goodreads reviews would disagree with me, but Moreno-Garcia makes the right choice here as she drops her story to a simmer. Rushing right into the mystery of High Place would have leap-frogged careful and necessary worldbuilding. The slower pace matches life at High Place, which consists of Catalina’s husband, Virgil; his aunt, Florence; his father, Howard; and his cousin, Francis. Francis is the only one among them who speaks Spanish. The Doyles are British transplants, drawn to the region by its rich silver mines. Like any good Gothic tale, the creepy house and its unfriendly inhabitants represent a more sinister threat. By setting her novel in an actual British mining ghost town, Moreno-Garcia explores how colonialism begets prejudices and fears that taint one generation after another. She doubles down on the theme by characterizing Howard as a white supremacist. When Noemí finds a eugenics journal in his study, she “no longer wonder[s] if Howard Doyle ha[s] a pair of calipers; now she wonder[s] how many he [keeps]” (39).
Howard’s character brought to mind David Grann’s The Lost City of Z, a true account of one of the last Victorian explorers, Percy Fawcett. Just as Howard believes Mexicans are an inferior race, Fawcett also struggled to view indigenous Amazonians as human. Grann writes, “When he first saw an Indian cry, [Fawcett] expressed befuddlement, sure that physiologically Indians had to be stoic. He struggled to reconcile what he observed with everything he had been taught” about white, Western superiority (157). Fawcett eventually “opposed the destruction of indigenous cultures through colonization,” but Howard makes no such progress. When sickness kills most of his indigenous mine workers, Howard heartlessly finds new ones to exploit. [You should read The Lost City of Z, too.]
In Howard’s strange house, Noemí suffers from bad dreams and sleepwalking. She’s rarely allowed to see her cousin and when she does, Catalina speaks of hearing voices. At other times her cousin verges on catatonic. Feeling uneasy in the house, Noemí ventures into the small town near High Place for help. A local doctor offers a second opinion. An herbalist offers remedies and, perhaps more importantly, the truth about tragedies in the Doyle family’s past. By the time Noemí wants to leave, though, it’s too late. The family wants–needs–her to stay for nefarious reasons. If the reasons had been revealed too early n the book, I am not sure I would have bought into them. But because Moreno-Garcia meticulously builds both characters and suspense, I was far too invested in Noemí to abandon her, just as she refuses to abandon her cousin.
-
Publication Date: 2020
Timeline: a few weeks at High Place
Setting: 1950s Mexico
Narrator: Noemí’s close 3rd POV
Length: 301 pages; audiobook runs about 10.5 hours
Fun Facts: Although it was optioned by Hulu, the company recently decided not move forward with a film adaptation. Here’s hoping someone else picks it up!
Pairs Well With: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier; Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon; The Lost City of Z by David Grann; “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe; “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
-
While reading a book, Noemi marks this passage: “In a sense all dreams foretell events, but some more clearly than others” (148). Have you ever experienced a dream that hinted at future events in your life? What did you think about it immediately after? How did you feel about it later when it seemed to signal something in your future?
The atmosphere both within and around High Place is gloomy and eerie. Consider the following passages:
In the house: “The house, so quiet, with its curtains drawn, was like a dress lined with lead. Everything was heavy, even the air, and a musty scent lingered along the hallways” (105).
In the cemetery: “The mist, which had seemed insubstantial and thin as she swung the gate open, had thickened. Noemi tried to think hard whether it was to her right or left that she should head . . . The sound, though. It was unpleasant. It made her want to go in the opposite direction. Buzzing. Maybe it was flies. Flies as green as emerald, their fat bodies atop a piece of carrion. Meat, red and raw, and really, why must she think these things? Why must she stand like this, with a hand in her pocket and her eyes wide, anxiously listening…” (96).
Describe a place that has had an impact on your mood. Where was it? Why do you think it affected you?
-
Cigarettes appear throughout the book as a symbol of Noemí’s growth. In the first chapter, Noemí asks her date for a cigarette. When he teases her that she might be considered “cheap” for such a request, she responds by insisting “[i]t’s so much more fun when a gentleman offers a lady a cigarette” (4). Although Noemí carries her own cigarettes, she likes playing the role of “a lady.”
Her relationship with cigarettes changes when she arrives at High Place. Alone in her room on the first night, she grabs a cigarette from her purse. Florence has forbidden smoking, so Noemí “wander[s] to the window, lest Florence complain about the stench” (26). In the uncertain atmosphere at High Place, Noemí cares less about how she is perceived by others. Although she attempts to hide the smell, she refuses to conform to Florence’s expectations by giving up her habit. Her cigarettes remind her of home; her sealed window hints at how she will have to fight the very house for her independence.
Over the course of her ordeal, Noemí’s taste for cigarettes dwindles. The morning after a frightening sleepwalking episode, Noemí “fiddle[s] with her cigarette, not quite willing to light it yet” (124). As she taps into bravery she didn’t know she possessed, she relies less on cigarettes for strength. When Francis recounts a gruesome event in his family’s past, Noemí “[holds] her unlit cigarette, watching the trees, light streaming through the branches” (137). Cigarettes have become markers of her previous carefree life, mere props that can’t help her fight the evil at High Place. In the climactic moment, Noemí will reach for a different weapon to escape the parasitic house.
-
Fiction: In a letter to the reader, Moreno-Garcia writes, “Mexico is peppered with mining ghost towns. The description has a double meaning. On the one hand, it refers to an abandoned place. On the other hand, these towns carry with them the traces of colonial rule and all its excesses. . . . It might sound a bit odd for a book titled Mexican Gothic to actually take place in a town that was modeled on a British town and exploited by British forces. Yet that is part of the ironic legacy of Latin America” (307-8). Research a lesser-known historical event in your area. Use your new knowledge as inspiration for a setting, conflict, or character.
Creative Nonfiction: Like predecessors such as “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Northanger Abbey, Mexican Gothic follows in the grand old Gothic tradition of belittling women for being too susceptible to imagination. Speaking to Noemí of his wife, Virgil remarks, “Your cousin has a wild imagination. . . . I think she saw in me a tragic, romantic figure. . . . No doubt she pictured the house as a delightful, rustic refuge which, with a little effort could be made cheerier” (164-5). Virgil blames Catalina’s imagination rather than his maltreatment for her disappointment. When Noemí speaks up on her cousin’s behalf, Virgil charges her with being “demanding” (34). Women who ask for what they need are nuisances. Think back to a time when you have been impacted by a cultural or gender stereotype. How did it make you feel? How did you react? What do you wish you had done differently?
-
At High Place, Noemí’s dreams blur into hallucinations. Examine how the structure of this passage mimics the chaos Noemí feels:
“But the smile froze on Noemi’s face when she saw the figure standing at the end of the hallway, watching her. It was a golden blur, it was the woman with the blur of a face, her whole body rippling, liquid, rushing toward Noemi with a huge open mouth–although she had no mouth–ready to unleash a terrible scream” (118).
Consider the comma splice in the second sentence. “It was a golden blur” and “it was the woman with the blur of a face” are both independent sentences. To adhere to proper conventions, they should be separated with either a period, a comma and a FANBOYS conjunction, or a semicolon. Instead, Moreno-Garcia squishes them into a comma splice, just like Noemí’s frightened thoughts run together.
Additionally, the second independent clause clarifies the first. Instead of “a golden blur,” Noemí realizes she has seen this image before. Swapping the indefinite article “a” for the definite “the” indicates that Noemí recognizes this blur.
But before Noemí can fully identify it, the image shifts, “rippling” and “rushing” to approach Noemí. As the horrible thing opens its mouth, Moreno-Garcia interrupts Noemí’s thoughts with a dependent clause set off between dashes. This aside shows Noemí struggling to make sense of this haunting image.
The last element of this powerhouse sentence is its cumulative (or loose) construction. In a cumulative sentence, the main clause occurs right away and is followed by modifiers. The sentence opens with a simple subject-verb independent clause: “It was a golden blur.” Thirty-four words unspool after this, creating a stringing-out effect that builds in sync with Noemí’s horror.
