Embedded Files
“Just because there are no ghosts, it doesn’t mean you can’t be haunted. Nor that you shouldn’t fear the haunting.” Mexican Gothic is a supernatural horror novel set in the tumultuous age of 1950s Mexico, following a protagonist who finds herself residing in an isolated mansion, adamant on rescuing her supposedly hysterical cousin from the enigmatic family she has married into. Themes of female independence, colonialism, and life, death and rebirth are set against the backdrop of a grotesque and eerie gothic house that “disfigures the land.” The book is almost as claustrophobic as the mansion itself, wrapping its tendrils around the reader and refusing to let go. Mexican Gothic is for fans looking for books similar to We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Plain Bad Heroines, and What Moves the Dead.
J. M.
“The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine.” Frankenstein (1818) was written by acclaimed gothic horror author Mary Shelley, which she began at only eighteen years old, and is often attributed as the first science fiction novel. It is a story within a story, a sailor’s letter to his sister, enclosed with a mysterious stranger’s written account of a horrifying tale. It is a classic story of illicit science experiments, dismembered corpses, and one man’s quest for progress. Themes of dangerous ambition, revenge, romanticism, and monstrosity reflect back early 1800s society’s fear of technological progress and prejudice against what they perceived as “monstrous,” and continues to hold up in the modern day. Frankenstein fits in with the other classic works of horror and societal commentary, such as Dracula, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
J. M.
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