Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: A review

Mexico in the 1950s. Noemí Taboada is a twenty-something party girl living in Mexico City, the daughter of a rich family. She wants for nothing, except perhaps independence. Her role, as seen by her parents, is to find and capture a suitable husband and settle down to producing grandchildren. But Noemí has other ideas. She may be a flighty and flirty young woman who enjoys her effect on the men in her circle, but she also has a more serious side; she wants to go to college to study anthropology.

Her father sees no need for that but since she is stubborn in her desire for an education, he offers her a deal. He will allow her to go to college and study anthropology if she will do one teensy little favor for him first.

Some months earlier her orphaned cousin, Catalina, had married a handsome English-Mexican named Virgil Doyle and they moved to his family's country estate and a house called High Place. Now Noemí's father has received a paranoid sounding letter from Catalina that accuses her husband of poisoning her and speaks of voices in the walls of the house and an overall aura of rot and decay. He asks his daughter to go and visit Catalina and find out what's going on. If she does this, she can go to college.

It seems like a good deal to Noemí, so she's up for it and off to the country she goes.

She finds High Place to be an imposing and gloomy pile and once she's inside she finds that Catalina had not exaggerated. It does exude an air of rot and decay. The walls are covered in mold and the Doyle family itself is pretty moldy. In addition to Virgil, there's his less attractive cousin Francis, Francis' mother Florence, the ancient family patriarch Uncle Howard, and various silent and robotic servants. Then, of course, there is Catalina who is confined to her room with (alleged) tuberculosis. Noemí finds that she is hardly allowed any time with her cousin and almost never alone.

Then the hallucinations and the sleepwalking begin. Soon Noemí hardly knows whether she is waking or sleeping. She sees ghostly presences and hears voices and that mold on the wall of her bedroom seems to be moving...

Moreno-Garcia sets her creepy, eerie atmosphere with great attention to detail. One can feel the damp and smell that mold and shudder at the silent gloom of that huge house lit only with candles and oil lamps. The sensible thing for Noemí to do would have been to run as far and fast as she could and get help to rescue Catalina. But, of course, she doesn't do that. Plucky Noemí will rescue her all on her own. Well, she does at least find an ally in Francis, the least objectionable Doyle.

I saw a positive review of this book in The Washington Post and then looked at the reviews on Goodreads, most of which were five-star raves. Well, I'm always up for a good gothic. Didn't I like Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights? And isn't one of my all-time favorite books Rebecca, a book which I read over and over again in my twenties? But, sadly, Noemí is no second Mrs. DeWinter, Francis is no Max, and Florence, though certainly creepy enough, is no Mrs. Danvers. And Moreno-Garcia is no Daphne du Maurier. She goes overboard on the creep factor of the Doyles and their gray, funereal house, but her characters are just words on a page. They never came alive for me and consequently, I couldn't care about them. By the time I got to the last quarter of the book, I was rushing through, just wanting to get to the end. Far be it from me to criticize anyone's rave review of a book. Read and let read is my motto. But I just couldn't "get" this one and I was glad to see the end of it.

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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