Silvia Moreno-Garcia really knows how to write scary stories! I did a detailed review of her novel Mexican Gothic here. |
Lots of good stuff in this ghost-filled tale! Moreno-Garcia knows how to build suspense and horror, and how to embed the scary stuff in everyday concerns. The plot of Silver Nitrate is complicated and wonderfully worked out, involving a number of interesting characters with a variety of occult skills, all set in Mexico City in 1993.
"The first week of December. It was the season to devour empanadas, eat rosca de reyes, and listen to the fireworks exploding late at night. He was hoping to drink all the way through the posadas—he’d work off the calories in January. It was not the month to be chasing after murderers." (p. 156).
On a morning after the two of them encounter some very frightening things:
"Tristán plated the eggs. He’d found corn tortillas in the refrigerator, but he clung to his northern customs and preferred flour ones, so he warmed one for Montserrat but none for himself. They took the plates and the glasses filled with orange juice to the table. They ate quietly. The silence strained the ears." (p. 229).
"The supper consisted of a watery chicken soup that had Tristán yearning for his mother’s lentil soup with chard and the comforts of his apartment." (p. 251).
A Parallel Demonstration of Racism in Mexico
The history of this fake mummy, displayed to the Mexican Congress, is a long one. The participation of a number of fraudsters with faked credentials and lucrative social media campaign to support their "research" is depressingly predictable. In an article in Vox, “The true story of the fake unboxed aliens is wilder than actual aliens: All the greed, fraud, centuries of racism, and deteriorated llama skulls behind Mexico’s unboxed aliens.” author Aja Romano documents the fraud and the role of racism in enabling the fraudsters. I was very interested because it’s the same racist motivation that features in the novel Silver Nitrate.
Romano writes: “even beyond the travesty that is disturbing individual disinterred remains lie the centuries of societal attempts to diminish the glory of pre-Columbian artists and architects and turn their works into inconceivable ancient alien wonders.”Interesting parallels thus seem to exixt between these various examples of sheer racism in South America and Mexico.
Review © 2023 mae sander.
2 comments:
I may need to read this book. I read Mexican Gothic and I still remember the "creepy feeling" it left.
Oh good. I'm glad you liked this one. I had it on my TBR list. I read her novel about the Daughter of Doctor Moreau and liked it and this one also sounds good. Funny about the meals interspersed.
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