Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s gothic horror novel Mexican Gothic is incredible. It has truly mastered the art of its trade, undertaking the ‘something-is-a-little-off’ family living in a something-is-quite-a bit-off house’ story without being cliché, melodramatic, or making the characters unsympathetic or unrealistic. The novel, set in 1950s Mexico, kicks off with its protagonist, 22 year-old Noemí Taboada, at a party with her boyfriend Hugo, when she gets called home by her father. Her father tells her that her cousin, Catalina, who is like a sister to her, had sent a letter to her after months of silence between the two following Catalina’s suspiciously quick marriage to Virgil Doyle. In the letter, Catalina says she hears ghosts in the walls and thinks that Virgil is going to poison her. Concerned for Catalina’s health and safety, Noemí ’s father asks Noemí to go to High Place, the manor in El Triunfo where Cataline lives, in the countryside of Mexico. At first Noemí refuses, but when her father promises to allow her to do a masters program in anthropology instead of simply getting married, she agrees. Once Noemí arrives at High Place, she discovers that the house is lit only by candles, that Catalina has tuberculosis, and that Virgil’s father, Howard Doyle, is interested in eugenics and believes in inferior and superior races. As her stay begins to lengthen, she starts having nightmares, sleepwalks for the first time since childhood, begins to notice that the family acts strange around her, and realizes that Catalina is no longer the lively young girl she knew so well just a year ago. The story is quite well-crafted. Noemí is a very interesting, likable, and believable protagonist. She stays in the house for a long time even though it creeps her out because of her love for her sister, her father, and her desire to get a master’s degree. She doesn’t immediately dismiss all the Doyles and her rebellious nature forces her to rock the boat even when it could be dangerous, just out of spite. Noemí, though, isn’t alone in being well-crafted. Each character is understandable, never acts out of character, is lifelike and heir actions are wholly plausible when meant to be, and the plot twists and secrets hidden in the book make sense in relation to the overall arc of the story. It is very hard to construct a haunted house-esque story without resorting to hackneyed tropes, making your characters unreasonable or implausible, or making the grand reveals too out of the blue to be believable or too obvious to be surprising. Yet Moreno-Garcia avoids all these pitfalls while weaving a masterpiece that caused me to tear through the book in mesmerized fear and spellbound horror. In other words, if you like horror, historical fiction, or gothic novels even the tiniest bit, to say that this book would be worth reading would be the universe’s most profound understatement. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Del Rey Books, 2021. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
Book Reviews
Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II, Reviewed by Brais, 12
Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II, by Alan Gratz, is a historical fiction novel set in Nazi Germany, 1943. Michael O’Shaunessey, a 13-year-old-boy, is an Irish and German citizen and the son of the Irish ambassador to Germany. Because of Michael’s dad’s job, the family is living in Berlin during World War II. Ireland, while publicly neutral in WWII, is sending spies to Nazi Germany, including Michael’s parents. Things get even more complicated for Michael when he is required—as every German boy during the Third Reich—to join the Hitler-Jugend, or Hitler Youth. Michael’s parents advise him to keep a low profile and stay out of trouble to protect the family’s secret, but Michael has his own ideas. Throughout the story Michael develops his spying skills and his ability to blend in, while staying true to his convictions. As a member of the Hitler Youth, he needs to resist the powerful propaganda machine that tried to eradicate the Jewish people and their culture from Germany. Reading this book, I found the pervasiveness of the Nazi indoctrination stunning. One example in O’Shaunessey’s novel is a math problem given to the Hitler Youth, which forces problem solvers to equate Jews with aliens. The pace of this story is very good, with exciting moments happening in every chapter. I found Michael’s experiences as a newcomer in Berlin relatable because I have had to move a few times with my family and been in situations in which I hardly knew anybody. I also enjoyed learning more about WWII and what it might have been like to experience Nazi propaganda as a young person during the Third Reich. This novel will appeal to readers who enjoy action-packed historical fiction, especially set during war conflicts. As I have always been interested in historical fiction and the two World Wars, this was the perfect book for me. Another book I liked, also set in WWII, is The Last Mission by Harry Mazer. I recommend Projekt 1065 for middle schoolers and up. For younger readers, the I Survived series, by Lauren Tarshis, is an outstanding collection of life-and-death stories revolving around actual historical events, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the sinking of the Titanic. (I was a big fan in elementary school and even got one of my books signed by the author!) Projekt 1065 is the first book by Alan Gratz that I have read, but he has written other historical fiction on topics such as 9/11 (Ground Zero), D-Day (Allies, Resist), and the refugee crisis (Refugee). I cannot wait to start my next one! Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II by Alan Gratz. Scholastic Press, 2016. Buy the book here and help support Stone Soup in the process!
The Relevance of Fahrenheit 451
Fahrenheit 451 has never been more relevant than it is today. The parlor walls that Ray Bradbury envisioned in his iconic story are similar to the large wall-mounted TV screens with continuous streaming content available for binge-watching. Video games have become immersive with Oculus and Metaverse. Many people (especially children) are addicted to video games, and some play them for a living. City planning often bolsters car culture, with the assumption that everyone has a car, which, majoritively, they do. People either rush to shops in cars through freeways to make good time or order in through Amazon, Instacart, and/or Doordash. A pedestrian walking to a grocery store is a rare sight indeed! As more and more books are made into movies, people prefer to consume the movie version rather than read the same book, which requires a lot more work and time. Movies lack richness, detail, and the nuances of a book, and there’s less power of imagination involved when everything is shown exactly as it is. Beatty summarizes this well when he says “Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume” (26). In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury demonstrates how mindless consumption of entertainment over the pure joy and fulfillment of reading and existing as one with nature leads to addiction to technology. Through the striking contrast between Clarisse and Mildred, Bradbury exemplifies the difference between a book-lover aware of the world around her and an addict whose life revolves around technology. Mildred is always in bed, looking at her parlor wall, believing actors—who neither know nor care about her—to be her family. Montag, Milred’s husband, walks home and despite the presence of his wife he finds the room empty. He expects to find “his wife stretched on the bed, uncovered and cold, like a body displayed on the lid of a tomb, her eyes fixed to the ceiling by invisible threads of steel, immovable. And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind. The room was indeed empty” (5). This excerpt shows there’s no true connection between them, romantic or otherwise. It also shows that Mildred seeks gratification in cheap, superficial, unhealthy ways, and does not seem to be truly happy. When Mildred overdoses on sleeping tablets, it’s such a common problem that they don’t even need a doctor for it. The handymen say, “We get these cases nine or ten a night. Got so many, starting a few years ago, we had the special machines built. With the optical lens, of course, that was new; the rest is ancient. You don’t need an M.D., case like this; all you need is two handymen, clean up the problem in half an hour” (6). This indicates people are deeply unhappy in this society. Mildred also says, “Books aren’t people, my family is people. They tell me things; I laugh, they laugh. And the colors!” (34). She seems to find television more tangible than books. It’s almost as if she believes that people on television have a personal connection to her and are her family. When Montag asks her, “Does your `family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?” (36), she’s unable to answer. She doesn’t want to acknowledge that the cast neither knows nor cares about her, and she’d rather remain in denial. Clarisse, on the other hand, has a deep personal connection with nature, books, and people. She admits she rarely watches the parlor walls. Instead, Clarisse likes to “smell things and look at things, and sometimes stay up all night, walking, and watch the sun rise” (3). And for this, she is sent to a psychiatrist, because it’s not considered normal. She even admits that her uncle was once arrested “for being a pedestrian” (4), and once “jailed for two days” (3) for driving slowly on the highway to observe the scene around him. Clarisse loves being outside and being one with nature. She likes enjoying the small things that no one else pays attention to, like “walking in the center of the sidewalk with her head up and the few drops falling on her face” (9). “Rain even tastes good,” she says (9). In this book, Clarisse is a breath of fresh air compared to the jaded Mildred. Bradbury uses the universal concept of book burning, which has always been a constant across multiple authoritarian regimes, because books foster independent thought—the dictator’s bane, and the seed of a democratic system. Therefore, burning books is how dictators enforce conformity. There have been instances of book burnings in China, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany, where the authoritarian regimes carried out large scale purges of authors, intellectuals, and teachers. Countless books and the ideas they contained have been destroyed. Closer to home, in the United States, book burnings were planned during the McCarthy era, when there was a red scare. Beatty explains the dictator’s perspective, and how this might have a populist basis when he says, “We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it” (28). He says books create inequality because it makes some people seem smarter than others. If everyone can’t be intellectuals, then no one should be, thereby forcibly removing diversity. Beatty also says, “You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can’t have our minorities upset and stirred” (29). So, according to him, if people are upset with a book, then burn it, thereby removing all freedom of expression, forcing everyone to conform. Bradbury imagines how life would be
