Words Jackie Laplante
While all the world is moony over Saint Valentine, this month’s book selection touches on that other February pastime: winter getaways. Guidebooks provide the first point of reference for trips – where to eat, where to stay, what to see – but, for me, the real knowledge of a new country comes from its fiction. Novels give a sense of a country’s history and its landscape but, more importantly, they provide insight into its inhabitants and their national demeanours.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic is an unusual but entertaining place to sample the flavour of Mexico. The book is a gothic horror novel, and each narrative and description creates a sense of foreboding that increases in intensity from the earliest chapters.
1950s Mexico City feels familiar. Society debutante Noemi wears fashionable European dresses, toys with the affections of young men, and aims for higher education. Her father’s request that she honour family obligation by going to the country to aid her newly-wedded but distressed cousin begins the arc of the story.
The drive to the country passes through scrubland, lush forest and, finally, winding mountain paths. A dilapidated mansion comes into view, as set apart from its surroundings as its inhabitants are from the local villagers. Its English merchant owners became wealthy using local labourers to mine silver. Interaction with the local village is discouraged. Dark, refined furniture and richly coloured velvet curtains are a stark contrast to the simple village homes.
As Noemi becomes familiar with the English family and gathers knowledge through unauthorized visits to the village, where locals recount the family’s history, she reflects on the colonial past of the family business. Noemi, of mixed heritage, is not immune to the family’s cultural disdain.
While the expected attributes of a gothic horror novel – moldy wallpaper, portraits that come alive, creeping ivy and dripping walls – are present, Noemi’s unsettling dreams add a touch of the magical realism that is entrenched in much of Latin American literature.
Learning about Mexico through a gothic horror novel is um, novel(!), but Moreno-Garcia subtly offers glimpses of 19th and 20th century Mexican history, a look at the cultural classes of the time, and a reminder of how colonialism shapes a nation.
Mexico is a huge country with regions that are diverse in weather, scenery and resources. The three books suggested below look at different eras and all give a flavour of life beyond the coastal resort experience.
1. Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
2. American Dirt, Jeanine Cummins
3. Under the Volcano, Malcolm Lowry
