Mexican Gothic-Review (With Spoilers)

 
This book has had the honour of being the first book I have read on my new kindle after being on my TBR for a while. The summary promised a lot of the elements that I normally enjoy-historical setting, set in Mexico, gothic elements and strong female protagonists. While it did indeed have all of them, I must say I did not enjoy ‘Mexican Gothic’ whatsoever. It was just so unforgivably boring and repetitive that by the time the big reveal happened, I was already fully tapped out of the narrative and only finished so I can give an honest and complete review.

‘Mexican Gothic’ is set in 1940s Mexico and it follows the story of a young wealthy socialite Naomi who receives a weird letter from her cousin and is sent by her father to investigate and potentially bring her back. Her cousin, Catalina, is newly wed and lives in a rather isolated house in a small town. Pretty soon, Naomi starts realizing that something nefarious is happening in the house as she begins having nightmares and hallucinations.

Unfortunately, while this concept sounded promising, especially as the novel was written by a Mexican Canadian female author, it failed to deliver on pretty much all fronts. First of all, the novel is supposed to be set in Mexico in the 1940s, but nothing about the story made me believe in that and helped me suspend my disbelief at all. The biggest part of the story is in the High Place, the isolated gothic house that is described as something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story. Doyles, Catalina’s husband's family are aggressively English and they purposefully keep isolated from the local Mexican population as much as possible. The dialogue is also incredibly modern and disregarding a few comments about women’s position in society and historical circumstances, there is nothing that indicates this is a historical novel. 

Still, the biggest issue for me is how boring the storytelling is. The good first part of the novel has absolutely no suspense at all, I just found myself getting annoyed with the Doyles and their exaggerated weirdness. Did anybody actually get shocked when it was discovered that they are indeed evil and that Catalina is kept essentially prisoner?  Big reveals in the novel also provided no suspense whatsoever as they were just exposition dumps to Noemi. Instead, the author focused on developing the relationship between Noemi and Doyle’s youngest son to the point that Catalina is…I don’t know because an absolutely ridiculously small part of the novel is dedicated to her and their relationship that is supposedly so strong that Noemi is the best person to help her cousin.

The characters are all such wasted potentials, especially Noemi. She is characterized as a stubborn and capricious but loyal and intelligent young woman, but she literally did nothing in the whole novel. She is supposed to be a truth sleuth, but all she does is annoy Doyles, speak to doctors and get pissed she can’t smoke in the house. None of the actual discoveries came from her, but it was rather revealed to her in a dream or by other characters. At the end of the novel, I don’t actually know a lot more about Noemi than I did at the start. Doyles are just a caricature of a trope that they are almost a subversion, but just really boring. The other female characters in the novel, especially once used by Doyles, had a lot of great potential and could have offered some good commentary, but instead fell flat, like most of everything else in the novel. 

The explanation of the mystery of High Place and this family also came from an exposition dump after pages and pages of repetitiveness and it was really not effective at all. I did not guess that it was about mushrooms, although they were frequently mentioned in relation to Francis, Doyles youngest son. This idea is not necessarily bad, but it was poorly executed. Instead of scared or disgusted, which were the feelings I expected from a horror book, I felt bored and disinterested. The author explicitly talks about how this is a generational curse, but there was simply not nearly enough talk about it, which I thought would be far more interesting than whatever the readers were given here.

I have expected an engaging and original story based in incredibly rich Mexican history with strong characters and strong gothic elements. However, I have gotten none of it. Instead, this was just so unbearably boring and unoriginal. There is nothing really Mexican or truly gothic about this story. I had trudged along to finish so I can offer a complete and honest review, but my lord it was a struggle. I was also deeply disappointed in the mystery and the way it was discovered to the reader. The author has received a lot of awards for her writing, so I understand that a lot of people found a lot of good within it. However, it simply did not sit right.

Unfortunately, I rated this ⅕ as I simply did not find anything in the novel to rate it higher. Did you read this novel? Did you read other works by this author? What did you think?

source: newyorktimes.com