Here’s the set-up of Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Noemi Taboada, a debutante living in Mexico City during the 1950s, receives a desperate letter from her newly married cousin, Catalina, begging for someone to save her from tragedy. Noemi heads off to High Place, a remote house in the countryside where Catalina now lives with her English husband, Virgil Doyle. Turns out members of his family live there as well, as do a collection of servants, and an array of mushrooms—yes, mushrooms—that will play a significant role in the turn of events.
According to the Doyles, Catalina is seriously ill, so Noemi is rarely allowed to visit her cousin in her room, let alone speak with her in private. Instead she wanders the forbidding house, encountering frequently patronizing and increasingly creepy family members along the way. Noemi kicks into detective mode, starts asking questions, and her dreams become filled with visions of blood and doom. If you’re thinking “Get out, Noemi!” you’d be in synch with me, compelled from page to page by my ever-growing fascination and trepidation. But of course loyal and determined Noemi stays put, because this is a gothic novel, seasoned with a bit of horror, working with familiar tropes but charged with a new sensibility and current concerns, including colonialism, classism, and colorism.
Mexican Gothic is unlike anything I’ve read—one reviewer compared it to Jane Eyre mixed with Lovecraft Country—and Silvia Moreno-Garcia is terrific world builder and story-teller, comfortable with surrealism, averse to over-simplification. I plan on rereading it, or perhaps I’ll listen to the audiobook for a different kind of shiver and thrill.