Short Book Reviews: An Occult Mexican Horror Film Thriller

 Silver Nitrate, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an amazing writer, bringing together sympathetic (if wonderfully weird) characters, pitch-perfect tropes, and Mexican settings. I adore some of her books more than others, but they’re all really good reads. I didn’t connect immediately with Silver Nitrate but when it grabbed me, it didn’t let go until the breathless finish.

Here, Moreno-Garcia throws together an unlikely pair of lifelong friends (ungainly sound editor Montserrat and tarnished but swoon-worthy soap-opera star Tristán), the 1930s Mexican horror movie industry, Nazi white supremacist obsession with the occult, and magic ignited by movies made with highly flammable silver nitrate film stock. And it all works. Brilliantly.

Just about the time Montserrat finds herself on the way out of a job in a 1990s Mexico City film studio, Tristán takes up with his elderly neighbor, reclusive legendary horror cult director, Abel. Abel convinces the two friends to help him finish a movie that was imbued with magic by a Nazi occultist. Intrigued although skeptical of the claims of the cult’s supernatural powers, Montserrat and Tristán agree. This is when things begin, slowly but with gathering speed, to go seriously pear-shaped.

Glimpses into the lower echelons of the film industry, peeks into a subgenre I never knew existed (Mexican horror films), and two compelling characters carried me along as hints and nuances deepened and formed ever more horrific connections. By the time Tristán started seeing the ghost of his dead girlfriend, it was clear we “weren’t in Kansas anymore.” As with her other works, Moreno-Garcia’s prose is strong and vivid, and she handles relationships as well as thriller-paced action with consummate skill.

Short Book Reviews: An Early Novel by a Master of Fantasy

 Signal To Noise, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)

I spent most of this book, a reprint of an early novel by Silvia Morena-Garcia, loathing the central character. The story bounces back and forth between “the past” (1988) and “the present” (2009), and the adventures of Meche (short for Mercedes, which she loathes) and her two best friends, Sebastián and Diana. The three were misfits in high school, each with their own family dramas and challenges. Mecha’s definitely the leader of the group, and she’s endlessly sarcastic, demanding, and miserly in her friendship. Her alcoholic father is a radio DJ and aspiring music historian, obsessed with vinyl records. Almost by accident, Meche discovers that by wishing hard enough while playing a specific record, she can make things happen. Soon she’s roped her friends into a magical circle, searching for especially potent songs and practicing increasingly dark acts of magic. In the present, she’s returned home for her father’s funeral, reliving the past as she packs up his papers and record collection.

I really wish Meche had been a more sympathetic character or that the turning point in her descent into magical violence had been more clear. I cared more about awkward, earnest Sebastián with his long-time, unspoken crush on Meche, and loyal Diana with her fussy dresses, Easy-Bake oven, and lupus diagnosis. Sebastián and Diana each had a moral compass but not enough courage to stand up to Meche. Even so, the story caught me up and kept me turning pages. This is an early work, and the author has matured greatly. I like her later characters a lot better, particularly those in Mexican Gothic, The Beautiful Ones, and Gods of Jade and Shadow.

Short Book Reviews: Dr. Moreau in Yucatan

 The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Ballantine)

My introduction to the Mexican-centered fantasy of Silvia Moreno-Garcia was her re-telling of the Cinderella story, Gods of Jade and Shadow. Now she offers a fresh interpretation of H. G. Wells’s classic novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau. Instead of retreating to a hidden island to perform his experiments, this Dr. Moreau seeks the relative solitude of the Yucatán jungles, on an estate owned by a wealthy man in search of cheap, malleable plantation laborers. Under the pretense of developing such workers, Dr. Moreau creates human-animal hybrids from various animals. They are, alas, less than functional, with rapid aging, joint problems, and other issues. Only his beautiful, meek, and secretly rebellious daughter, Carlota, is perfectly human. Dr. Moreau needs a majordomo to run the estate and care for the infirm hybrids, so he hires Montgomery Laughton, a drifter heavily in debt and drowning a broken marriage in drink. Isolated and surrounded by lush forest and fascinating creatures, Montgomery begins to slowly form a friendship with Carlota and to heal.

When the landowner’s charming and egotistical son arrives at the estate, he is instantly smitten with Carlota, thereby setting into motion a cataclysmic chain of events.

Like other of Moreno-Garcia’s adventures, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is strongly character-driven. Maturation and healing are the twin lenses that focus the action, which begins slowly in the near-static serenity of the estate and builds to a breathless climax. At first, I found Carlota childish, especially her constant verbal sparring with her two closest hybrid friends. Her flirtation with the landowner’s son struck me as dangerously naïve. As the story went on, however, I noticed the parallels between her increasing understanding of the world at large and of herself. Her capacity for acceptance—of her friends, of her father, of Montgomery with his tortured past, and of her own true nature—emerges as the moral and emotional center of the book.

Short Book Reviews: Noir Gangsters in 1970s Mexico City

Velvet Was the Night, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)

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!”

 

Short Book Reviews: The Dark World of Mexican Vampires

 Certain Dark Things, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Tor)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia continues to knock my socks off, literarily speaking. Her Gods of Jade and Shadow was nothing short of breath-taking. Now she turns her wild and dark imagination to a vampire tale set in Mexico City. In this world, there are not one but many kinds of vampires, each with its own history, weaknesses, and predilection for bloodshed. Certain Dark Things tells the story of the perilous friendship between street-kid Domingo and Atl of the Aztec line of vampires whose family has been wiped out by the viciously violent narco-vampire clan. Atl is young and inexperienced in vampire terms and has led a carefree life, never having to make hard choices. Now she’s on the run for her immortal life. She’s the most beautiful woman Domingo has ever seen, and he can hardly believe his luck when she accepts his help. Atl’s only hope for a way to safety lies in fleeing Mexico, but to do that she needs documents available only through a secret and highly elusive vampire underground. Unfortunately, she soon attracts the attention of both crime bosses and a cop dedicated to exterminating her kind.

I’d classify this book as dark urban fantasy rather than horror, but it should appeal to readers of both genres. If you’ve never read Moreno-Garcia, you’re in for a treat.

Short Book Reviews: A Gothic Horror in Mexico

 Mexican Gothic, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey)

Slowly building but gripping from the start, this Gothic horror tale set in 1950s Mexico is just the sort of brilliantly executed, engaging tale you’d expect from the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow. It’s gorgeous, sensual, and incredibly creepy, at times reminding me of all the tales and movies in which fungus is the agent of evil or at least creepiness. (Remember Brian Lumley’s story, “Fruiting Bodies”? Or Molly Tanzer’s more recent novel, Creatures of Want and Ruin?) Here Moreno-Garcia has given these elements and the trope of the sinister Gothic mansion her own flair and flavor.

Noemí Taboada ventures to a big, spooky mansion after her newly married cousin sends a desperate, if incoherent, message. We know, of course, that all is not as it appears to be in this realm of shabby British expatriate gentility. There’s the ancient, decaying, bed-ridden patriarch, the cousin’s charismatic but sadistically manipulative husband, the hyper-controlling aunt, and the pale, poetic nephew who draws beautiful sketches of fungi. But Noemí is no ordinary Gothic heroine, she’s a modern (well, 1950s modern) woman with scholarly aspirations, a talent for controlling social situations through flirtation, the ability to drive a car, and an impetuous fearlessness that gets her out of trouble as often as it gets her in. Yet even her forthrightness and independence are not enough to render her immune from the slow intoxication of the mansion, High Place, and its inhabitants. Fungal spores are in the air she breathes, the food she eats, even the wallpaper of her bedroom, and it’s only a matter of time before she succumbs.

From the breezy opening scenes to the slowly building creepiness to the utterly horrific page-turner climax, Mexican Gothic delivers on its promise. It held my imagination in its fungal-laced grip.

This award-worthy novel is definitely not for reading late at night if you intend to get any sleep!