Neomi is a well-off society girl from Mexico City asked by her father to go rescue her cousin Catalina from an apparently bad marriage to the handsome Virgil Doyle, who she lives with in a crumbling mansion in the Mexican countryside, along with the rest of the Doyle family.
Catalina had written, talking of ghosts in the walls, and as Neomi quickly discovers, something is wrong in the house. Daily affairs are overseen by the matron-like Florence, Virgil’s sister; the brother, Francis, appears to ge entirely controlled; Catalina herself appears to be being kept in a near-catatonic state; and everyone in in thrall to the ancient Howard, whose body is so old it is puss-ridden, putrified and appears to be decomposing.
The independent, fiery and smart Neomi investigates, gradually bringing the fearful Franicis on side. And she discovers a lot, though its not always clear, at least not until the end.
[Spoiler alert!] Ultimately the Doyle family discovered centuries ago a supernatural force, a fungus, that emanates supernatural power. They have ingested it for years, ultimately giving Howard a prolonged life and chosen family members – always male, of course – power. They have retained the power for themselves through incest, and murder, but were using Catalina as new vehicle for reproducing, and plan to use Neomi the same way.
The strength of this nicely written and constructed story is the way these secrets unfold; you know there’s something deeply wrong, but it’s a complex secret and the reader learns about it as Neomi does.
It’s also an intriguing take on the patriarchy – how it’s the men who most benefit from the supernatural power, Florence helps maintain this, and its the continuous under-estimation of Neomi as a vain, entitled society girl that allows her to succeed in the end.
Catalina herself is much more typically helpless; she’s always been obsessed with fairytales, and the romance of being whisked away to a countryside mansion by Virgil appeals, until of course it is inverted and the horrific reality is revealed.
Two things really stood out in this novel. One was the way Moreno-Garcia plays with some typical horror tropes – the folk horror-like way in which Neomi leaves the city and experiences the unsettling nature of rural life; the vampire-lore idea of a house built on soil imported from the home country (from England to Mexico); and the classic haunted house, which runs through all this.
The other thing – and the thing that really elavates this book – is that the supernatural power that drives Howard and his family is a fungus that appears to have a kind of creeping, malevolent consciousness. What it wants isn’t clear – if it even wants anything; it is non-human, and for precisely that reason its motives are unknown and unknowable. I’ve blogged on this previously here – https://gilesbooks.wordpress.com/2020/08/12/literature-of-the-non-human/.
There is more interest in nature or natural phenoma as things-in-themselves, as science discovers their complexity, their drives, possibly even forms of consciousness (think panspychism), but also their omplete otherness. What’s so intriguing is the attempt to write about the non-human, to feature it in a story, and the impossibility of ever representing it or portraying it.
Giles book reviews 