Warning: SPOILERS! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!!!

Get lost vampires: there are some even scarier monsters in the Gothic-sphere. They live in High Place, the mysterious, ramshackled (...and seemingly undulating) house at the center of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Best-Selling 2021 novel, MEXICAN GOTHIC.

Join IWAW this week as Sonja shares some deep and fascinating research into Mexican history, European Victorians’ cultural fears, competing theories of eugenics, colonial tropes, and some inside info on the world of mushrooms. Vanessa sits raptly at Sonja’s knee for this one, and you should join us because Sonja’s research truly helps a reader appreciate the wealth of historical and cultural knowledge that Moreno-Garcia weaves through her atmospheric, unpredictable, and satisfyingly subversive Gothic tale.

Along the way, there are plenty of ghostie Gothic Easter eggs, and Sonja and Vanessa agree on everything except the fate of one character: Vanessa argues for cuddles and Sonja for incineration.

REFERENCES

To start your own mushroom culinary adventures, do check out Sonja’s dad’s book, A Cook's Book of Mushrooms by Jack Czarnecki

When the Past Isn't Dead: Post Colonialism and Horror in Mexican Gothic

A Piece of Britain Lost in Mexico, BBC

Real de Monte: A British Mining Venture in Mexico

Fungal Colonialism in Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic

"Kubla Khan" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"You Foolish Men" by Sor Juana