When it comes to creepy fiction, my needs are quite specific. I am incredibly weedy, I once had nightmares after watching an episode of Midsomer Murders which is about as feeble as you can get without actually turning into a flower, so my tolerance of ick and gore is non-existent. Edgar Allan Poe really is my limit. Yet I do enjoy a good ghost story, a sinister old house on a hill, shadows lengthening by the fireside. Scary but not too scary because, as well as hating ick, I am quickly repelled by anything too cruel or too evil, even E. Nesbit can go too far for my tastes, I need a happy ending.
Recently, I have bravely read Flyaway by Kathleen Jennings which I enjoyed but in a tense sort of way. Robert Aickmann’s Dark Secrets was also very good and although the first story was truly horrifying, the rest of the collection was unsettling in a delightfully spooky but not upsetting way. Emboldened, when I saw a new copy of Mexican Gothic in the English-language section of my local library, I borrowed it. The reviews on its front pages compared it to Jane Eyre, Rebecca, Dracula and The Mysteries of Udolpho, which appealed. (Though I may say here I thought the reference to Jane Eyre rather a stretch.) I initially also thought of House of Mist by María-Luísa Bombal, but although there is a lonely house wreathed in mist, a young wife, strangeness and atmosphere, they are not really alike at all.
Noemí Taboada is a light-hearted, slightly spoilt debutante, enjoying the social whirl of Mexico City in 1950. Her beloved cousin Catalina has married, somewhat against the family’s wishes, an impoverished Englishman who lives in an isolated old house deep in the mountains, and now sends a wild and desperate letter to Noemí’s father. Should she be receiving proper psychiatric care rather than being nursed by the Doyle family in the middle of nowhere? Noemí’s father sends her to find out. But of course, it is all much worse than she could have imagined!
Silvia Moreno-Garcia has taken lots of Gothic tropes and had a great deal of fun with them. There is a rotting mansion, wreathed in mists and beside an old graveyard. There is a nasty aristocratic family, haunted by the murders of their relatives some thirty years ago and obsessed with ideas of racial superiority (naturally theirs is the superior race, non-whites the inferior ones). There are strange dreams that may be true, a mysterious sickness, disused silver mines and a lot of fungus. There is creeping about the house at night. To these she adds a twist of feminism as Noemí proves herself, despite her high heels and taffeta skirts, to have the right blend of courage, rebelliousness, intelligence and love to expose the house’s horrible secrets.
In the end it is horrifying and I hope that I can sleep well tonight… What I like about it though is that the horror is used to tell us something about racism, class systems and yes, the patriarchy. And the novel is beautifully structured and paced, the characters well drawn, the atmosphere properly creepy. But I shan’t tell you any more because I don’t want to spoil it...
(The only remaining mystery to me is why the paperback edition that I read has a very bland outer cover that reflects very little of the novel and then a brilliant inner cover, which is the one at the beginning of this post.)
What are your feelings about creepy fiction? And what is the most frightening novel you have read?