I’ve always had pretty much just two hard and fast rules for the fiction I consume: no horribly sad endings, and no horror. I’m too much of an emotional sponge for things that feel intentionally engineered to instill a bad feeling. Whether that’s a final chapter that seems all about the futility of hope, or a pervasive eeriness that will have me spooked by shadows on the walls at night, I steer clear.
Yet then came 2020. Something about being on lockdown in my childhood home for a year with little to do created a broadened space in which I was able to step outside the bounds a little. I still haven’t budged on the sad front, but for some reason I found myself pushing the envelope on the creepy.
The first toe-dip was using Youtube to watch someone’s entire recorded playthrough of the video game series Bioshock. A friend in high school once told me a lot about the plot of Bioshock, and I always thought of it as the scariest video game ever. (It definitely isn’t, but stay with me.) The first two in the three-game series are about an underwater city designed to be a lawless capitalist paradise, which fell to ruin after its citizens discovered and rampantly abused a substance that gave them superpowers. Players of Bioshock follow a specific character through a curated story full of unhinged, murderous power-junkies, mech-suited enforcers, and most creepily, genetically modified little girls with huge needles that harvest power from the dead, and are harvested in return.
I think it was the video game format that made Bioshock tolerable viewing for me. Unlike a movie or even a book, the interactive format made it harder to maximize pacing, cameras, and timing for the biggest possible scare. Also importantly, the player I was watching, BaerTaffy, kept a running voiceover the whole time, cutting the tension with his own lighthearted and quippy narration. I did find Bioshock scary, but it was in the way I always heard other people describe feeling about horror movies— a fun scary. Exciting, thought-provoking, and memorable, without leaving my mind coated in a nasty slime of distress.
I credit this experience with bringing me to finally read Mexican Gothic. And I’m so grateful for that.
By the time I got the guts to pick up Mexican Gothic, a 2020 novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, it had already been the it-book of Twitter for several weeks. Set in 1950s Mexico, the story follows a young woman named Noemí, whose cousin Catalina has recently married an Englishman and moved away from Mexico City to his rural family estate outside a different town. Catalina has begun sending unhinged letters back to her family, claiming that her new home is haunted by untold darkness, and that her life is in grave danger. Noemí’s father, with the unfailing logic of so many supporting horror story characters, decides that before taking any drastic action himself, he will send Noemí to visit Catalina and suss out whatever is going on with her. What could possibly go wrong?
The book was on my radar at the time most of all because of its absolutely stunning cover, a rich jewel-toned portrait of a woman in a confection of a burgundy gown against a silky green wall, absentmindedly clutching a bouquet of wilting flowers, her eyes enigmatically off-page. The cover was created by Tim Green of Faceout Studio, and I think he deserves the book designer equivalent of an Oscar for it. It’s showstopping and unforgettable, and I’m so glad this is one of the relatively few hardcover books I actually own.
From the first chapter, and every chapter thereafter, Mexican Gothic lived up to its packaging and then some. I think this story slipped past my anti-horror firewalls and into my heart because everything besides the scary was so very deliciously my cup of tea. The shining star of it all is our heroine, Noemí. I love her so much. Noemí is a beautiful, popular socialite, and completely unapologetic about it. She puts thought into the ensembles best suited to the ~vibes~ of exploring a horror mansion. She wastes a lot of money pursuing ever-changing fields of education. She plays up different aspects of her personality to manipulate people, and is self-aware enough to know when it isn’t working. She smokes cigarettes. She’s smart, resourceful, brave, defiant, in touch with her emotions. She’s my queen.
The scenery and atmosphere-building of Mexican Gothic are also immaculate. When I think back on the reading experience, I can still overwhelmingly feel the way the mansion rendered itself around me in four dimensions, chilly, dank, at once faded and over-colored. I can picture every single moment of the book so bizarrely clearly. I was there.
And then the horror happens. Without giving anything away, the unraveling of this family’s bad, bad, BAD secrets and agendas drips along so gradually, and then suddenly and without warning escalates from two to ten thousand percent scare factor.
All I’ll say is this: fancy old English men are nasty; never underestimate how big of a red flag finding someone casually reading a phrenology magazine is; thank god for mysterious village witch women with potions of uncertain provenance; and mushrooms (yes, mushrooms) will never be quite the same for you.
Falling in love with Mexican Gothic has changed me just a little bit for good. I was in the middle of writing my own very slightly gothic-inspired novel while reading it, and it taught me a highly enjoyable lesson about how a little bit of creepy can enhance, not ruin, an otherwise romantic-toned story. I’m still a far cry from queuing up Hereditary for a casual watch, but I love it that this book happened to me. If what I’ve said appeals to you even a little, run, don’t walk to your local indie bookstore, pour your favorite moody beverage, and settle in for an adventure you won’t soon forget.
If you want to check it out, here's BaerTaffy's YouTube channel.
About the reviewer: Tova Es is a writer based in New York City. Find her on Twitter as @talovala
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