Book recommendation: Mexican Gothic

The land kept its riches in the dark, sprouting no trees with fruit.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

For fans of: Dracula, Kindred, The Yellow Wallpaper, Get Out

The hype around Mexican Gothic on book Twitter built swiftly and steadily, like a hurricane. Swept away, I hurried to Bookshop.org to order my copy before it sold out. When it arrived, though, I shelved it in favor of Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn. Why?

Between the cover and the synopsis, and the author’s skillful Twitter promotion, I knew I’d be hooked by this book. I get a strange feeling when I have a to-read list that’s too exciting: I don’t want to be through with the anticipation, done with the feeling of being sucked in to a story. That feeling was especially strong with Mexican Gothic.

Well?

Reader, I finished it in a day.

Some reviewers complained it started too slowly; I was very surprised to read that. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing never wavers from pushing the plot forwards. Her sentences tend towards brusque, but not blunt. They create drumbeats. Hear this:

He took off the robe, placing it around her shoulders. It was too large. He was tall and she was not. It never bothered her much, tall men. She simply looked them up and down.

Part of this style comes from the strong voice of the protagonist, Noemí, who is charmingly self-assured and headstrong. Noemí makes for an entertaining inversion of the typical Gothic woman, who is too often fragile, nervous, and melodramatic. Moreno-Garcia demonstrates great skill in trapping this capable protagonist without an abundance of what I might call the eyeroll effect: that feeling when the movie theater collectively wonders why so many white families buy obviously haunted houses.

The horror-logic of Mexican Gothic is intricately constructed, ratcheting up drama in tandem with its constraints on the protagonists. There’s often little time to wonder why Noemí doesn’t just leave, or fight, before it’s made painfully clear her entrapment.

One reason it works so well is the hostage: as in Dracula, the protagonist is fighting against evil not because she’s too stubborn or stupid to leave, but because a loved one is in the fight of her life. I love this device in horror because it’s so eminently believable. Neither, too, does Moreno-Garcia take advantage of the trope. Catalina is lovable, and Moreno-Garcia crafts some truly creepy scenes early on to hint at the danger she’s in at High Place.

Ah, and we get to High Place. The other column of Mexican Gothic’s horror-logic, a fresh rendition of the Gothic house borne of works like The Fall of the House of Usher and The Yellow Wallpaper – to which you will find many allusions. High Place as a horror setting slow-burns. Like all Gothic settings it’s immediately unwelcoming, then quickly foreboding; but Mexican Gothic takes its time in revealing the true secrets and spookiness of the old English Manor and its inhabitants.

I don’t want to get into detail about High Place or the Doyles, the ex-pat English exiles who inhabit it, because the care with which Moreno-Garcia reveals every thread of their lore shouldn’t be preempted. Just know you’re in for a tale of Gothic colonization, the multifaceted horrors of racism, and a legend of the deep mire.

Just go read it!

Worms, stems, the snake in the grass rose and wrapped itself around Noemí’s neck.

You’re ours, like it or not. You’re ours and you’re us.

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Beautiful Words Online #2: Magical Realism

Magical realism is one of those slippery genres that has found purchase in some fantastic novels, but is perfectly, sublimely suited to the short story. It’s a genre I will discuss later, in depth, but here I hope to give you a bit of an introduction. A short reading list of some of my favorite magical realism out on the web, both recent and aged. Let me know what you think!

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel García Márquez

The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish.

GGM is widely heralded as the father and master of magical realism. Though commonly displayed in his books, One Hundred Years of Solitude being the most famous, Marquez’s short stories combine romantic moody imagery, folklore, and fantasy elements to great effect. The result is storytelling that feels like gritty realism describing a world you do not recognize. No one else does it quite so well.

Although many thought that his reaction had not been one of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.

~

A Tale for the Time Being

Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being is a triumph of voice and mystery that honestly left me reeling as it wound to a close.

A Tale for the Time Being is one of those rare novels that pulls off a tricky form to astounding effect: first person journaling. Half of the novel is told from the point of view of young Nao as she writes in a journal to her Time Being, the chosen person who will find her journal and read it. If that sounds somewhat convoluted, that’s because it is; a combination of childlike imagination and Zen philosophy that works flawlessly. She addresses the other POV character, Ruth, without knowing who she is, and time slips in and out of linearity as Ozeki weaves their two stories together.

Nao begins her journal to tell the story of her anarchist, feminist, ass-kicking Buddhist nun of a great-grandmother, Jiko. This is definitely a tagline that drew me in immediately. However, I wasn’t disappointed when Nao swerved constantly from this goal, chronicling instead the trials of her life and struggles with bullying, her father’s mental illness, and her growing attachment to 104-year-old Jiko and the Buddhist lifestyle.

Exhaustion!

Sorry guys! Yesterday was my birthday and today I spent the day in Boston, walking like 5 miles and then driving for two hours, so I’m a bit too exhausted to write a post, even a short one on inspiration. My brain is just too kaput.

However, I will be here on Friday with a review of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being— I promise!

I hope everyone is staying inspired and energized throughout the midweek slump. At least that’ll make one of us. 🙂

I am Obsessed With: Fallout (and RPG storytelling)

Bear with me– this might come off as more of a game review than anything having to do with writing, but it’s sort of an introduction to the second installment of Flying off the Page, which should be posted Wednesday. I just can’t not write this piece, because any time I think about the impending Fallout 4 I have heart palpitations.

Also, it’s my birthday tomorrow! I might be getting my wisdom teeth out on the next day, as well, so if I miss a post (or if it’s horribly incoherent), my apologies.

Back to Fallout 4 and my resulting health complications. Actually, let’s take it even further back, to the first day I slotted Fallout 3 into my Xbox 360.

I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never even played any of the Oblivion titles, so Fallout 3 was really my first foray into a single-player RPG—up until then, I’d been playing story-lite FPS shoot-em-ups like Call of Duty and Halo. (Okay, Halo is also great. I played Halo 4 the other day and I forgot how satisfying the campaigns are. Even though promethean knights are a challenge sent from hell itself.)

What I really didn’t expect, though, was to get sucked in almost immediately. Your father promptly disappears, you are promptly forced to flee the vault, and promptly you are dumped out into the Capital Wasteland, to make of life what you please. There is a main questline, of course—the missing father must be found—but it’s all the choices you make along the way that make the storytelling of the Fallout universe so impactful.