Mexican Gothic - A New Subgenre That Just Might Take Root

Silvia Moreno-Garcia's latest novel Mexican Gothic is every bit Mexican and every bit Gothic as the title makes it sound! An old British family with a funky secret living in a very creepy mansion built in the middle of nowhere in Mexico... A rich and young Mexican girl, Noemí Taboada, sent there by her father to check on her cousin Catalina who married into this peculiar family and who, in a letter for help, indicates that someone might be poisoning her...

During her stay in this gloomy place, the lighthearted and carefree Noemí experiences increasingly creepy, unsettling and outright invasive illusions/dreams which only solidify Catalina's suspicions. And oh, how right she is.

The first half of Mexican Gothic heavily builds up tension that leads to a deeply disgusting turning point (slight spoiler - a secene reminiscent of another very uncomfortable scene from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" 1974), from where on the storyline quickly finds a direction, certainly different from what most readers might have expected when they started reading this book.

It was about a year ago that I have read Gods of Jade and Shadow (Gods) for the Otherland Mythic Fiction Book Club. Even though there are more than enough obvious parallels between Gods and Mexican Gothic, - like the era and place in which both stories are set, a certain fascination with cars, a confrontation of Mexico's own history and its colonial history, a very engaging storyline, a bold female protagonist with a ready tongue - I have to admit that I prefer the latter, mainly because she really ups the horror and her criticism of patriarchy and colonialism in this one.

More than in any of her previous novels and on more than one level does Moreno-Garcia denounce sexual and racial oppression in Mexican Gothic - the British oppression on Mexican miners, strong religious standards, an idealized and unrealistic image of women, the post-Darwin fascination with evolutionary hierarchies and eugenics. In order to go there she very carefully and slyly constructs the mashup that is "Mexican Gothic", a subgenre that might well take root and establish itself in the future.

Ever since finishing the book I have been pondering on the lead character Noemí, whom I initially found very irritating, to put it mildly. What could I possible find interesting in a socialite, a person from the upper crust, whose only serious interest consists of dancing, partying, chasing guys? Finishing the book, I realized that I should have given Moreno-Garcia a little more credit, I do apologize for that. Noemí is all of the above, but she also has an academic career ahead of her and she is honest in her feelings. I reckon that Moreno-Garcia knew exactly what she was doing while creating not only Noemí, but all of her characters and what they stand for. Feeling uncomfortable about the way the protagonist acts in some situations, I later realized that it is all part of one person, a meticulously built complex character, away from the gothic naive, single-dimensionedness, towards a more realistic picture of a woman. Flawed, yes, but also not without her strengths.

Finally I want to add that it is an absolute feast for me whenever an author warps the Victorian gothic novel and puts in their own twist. Although arguably all western horror is a warp of the gothic novel in some way, I believe there is much more space to do it a little more explicitely and, why yes, even more playfully. And they exist, the books that push the boundaries of the conventional gothic, that are, in all their traditionalness, highly original and self aware. The only example I can think of off the top of my head right now that does this is T.E.D. Klein's The Ceremonies, where the gothic novel and cosmic horror mix in an unprecedented fashion. In Mexican Gothic, Moreno-Garcia does something similar, though I can't stress enough that I don't want to compare these two books in any way. I only want to suggest that they are playing with the same concept - albeit diferently. Though both books seemingly reproduce a formal gothic novel, Moreno-Garcia uses the gothic notion to further her progressive ideas, causing an outright clash with the very nature of this old fashioned genre in order to question and thus challenge the mere essence of it. Klein, on the other hand, aims and succeeds at creating a work of monumental dimensions whose mere frame is Gothic. But so much for that.

I would definitely recommend Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic to a vast majority of readers, it is gripping, gives a lot of food for thought and is highly unconventional!