The historical setting for Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s noir
novel, Velvet Was the Night, is the violent suppression of a student
uprising in Mexico City in the late 1960s, and that part was fascinating. The
characters, an idealistic youth drawn into the world of gang brutality, and an
insecure secretary, find themselves drawn into the mysterious disappearance of
an art student who may be in possession of incriminating photographs related to
the uprising. For most of the book, Maite and Elvis go about their separate
lives, slowly spiraling toward one another.
I loved the novels of Silvia Morena-Garcia previously
reviewed here (Gods of Jade and Shadow, The Beautiful Ones, Mexican Gothic,
and Certain Dark Things). For me, however, this gritty novel never found
its center, either dramatically or morally. I found both central characters
ambivalent enough to be unsettling. I kept waiting for them to grow up, but
they never did. Elvis becomes a casual murderer and torturer, without empathy
for his victims even when he himself becomes one. Maite’s a thief, consumed
with envy, living vicariously through the treasures she makes off with. Sure, they’re
anti-heroes, but I like a little redemptive virtue and a reason to connect
emotionally with my anti-heroes. The only characters I cared about were minor
and didn’t stay around for the ending. The background, while intriguing, seemed
to belong to a different story. Added to this, I’m profoundly uninterested in
gangsters and their culture, and would not have picked up this book were it not
for the author’s other, luminously creative works. I applaud her courage in
tackling new subject material. All experiments run a risk, and the edgier the
territory, the trickier the high-wire act. Other readers may gobble this one up
but for me, even with Moreno-Garcia’s storytelling skill that kept me in the
story until the end, the result was more “meh” than “magical!”
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