Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Reading this on Halloween was a perfect treat for me. I was CHARMED.

Not charmed in the usual sense, mind you. Nothing about this honest gothic novel was anything I would naturally have swooned over except in the sense that shuttling me away to a distant English moor would give me a taste of something strange and exotic.

Indeed, I wasn't sure -- at first -- but having BROODED over the subject, feeling the ROT of the occasion, losing myself in a high mountaintop mansion transplanted from old English sensibilities to the remoteness of a Mexican village, I wound up, gleaming eyed, in the slow burn of a nearly Byronesque tale. Or Wuthering Heights.

Of course, one must place this novel precisely where it falls on the spectrum. It's romance, or at least romantic, even when it's creepy and horrible and even morally disgusting. This is not an apology for old gothic novels. This is a modern recreation and we can expect a huge, if ambiguous, wrap up.

I was thoroughly amused. :)


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