A review by thebakersbooks
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is one of my auto-read authors and I'm shocked it took me this long to get to Mexican Gothic, which is possibly her most acclaimed work to date. I'm not a big horror reader (can I still say that given how much horror I've read lately?) but this book wasn't overly scary, more creepy and gross in the vein of many gothic stories. It's clear to see Moreno-Garcia is both a scholar and aficionado of the gothic genre(s); in the post-book material she sums it up better than I could:

 "Mexican Gothic is a fun romp through a trove of Gothic tropes, including a dark and gloomy house, an alluring yet dangerous man, a family with secrets, and things that go bump in the night. But it's also a story about those other ghosts: the ones that were left like a scar on the land."

The book tells the story of Noemí Taboada and her travails while visiting her cousin in a very strange house full of even stranger people. It's also threaded with topics like colonialism, eugenics, and exploitation of several types. The narrative gets much darker than I expected, although with my new knowledge of gothic writing I'm now aware that's typical of this kind of novel.
I'm mostly impressed that despite the depths of horror and despair to which the plot descended, it managed to deliver a tentatively happy ending, complete with budding romance!


I finished this book in just over 24 hours *while in the middle of moving,* which is to say I got a bit swept up in the story and am having a hard time teasing apart exactly what made it so excellent. Some things I really enjoyed were the symbolism and the theme of modernity vs. decay, as well as the juxtaposition of upbeat, progressive MC Naomí and the moldering house and family with whom she stays. Naomí's personality made the book less scary than it might otherwise have been, I think, because she stays funny, determined, and outgoing through many awful situations.

I'm pretty sure I'm the last person to read this book, but to anybody who hasn't: I absolutely see why it's popular and I can't recommend it strongly enough. That said, I highly advise checking out the content warnings first because there are MANY. My cw list below involves a few spoilers, but they're nonspecific and don't directly ruin any major plot points. Anyway, Mexican Gothic reaffirmed my status as a Silvia Moreno-Garcia fan to the point that I'm tempted to break pattern and read another book by her ASAP when I'm supposed to be working through my TBR in order.

content warnings: body horror, cannibalism, spousal abuse, medical abuse, mentions of mass murder, gaslighting, incest, infanticide, eugenics, racism, sexual assault, mentions/implications of rape 
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