July Book Club: Mexican Gothic, Mid-month Post

Okay so this is the post for talking about this month's book, Mexican Gothic by Silvia , at the midway point of the month.  Everyone naturally reads at their own pace - I will undoubtedly have finished this book well before this post gets published (sorry!  I can't help myself and my library loan would've expired by July 15th anyhow so I have an excuse), but for the sake of spoilers, let's say posts in the comments of this post should only discuss thoughts and feelings on the book through the end of chapter 12, which is roughly the half-way point of the book.

Anyhow, spoilers up to that point after the jump:



Some thoughts of my own at this point - I've literally paused reading the book right now after chapter 12 to get these thoughts on paper - and no further.

Reading Gothic Horror at night can get more than a little freaky, and that's definitely the case with this book, which I've had to put down a bunch of times rather than blazing through.  It's not a genre I read often, I think the last such novel I read was "Under the Pendulum Sun", which is very different (mainly due to that heroine's religious faith), if similarly gothic and freaky.

That said, the likely antagonist being a racist and eugenicist definitely fits the modern day pretty damn well, with the whole Doyle family seemingly in his thrall.  Not sure I really buy the idea that Ruth went on her killing spree because of love, as opposed to the rest of the house's oppression (and we're all convinced the golden light is Ruth talking from beyond the grave, right?)  Also I'm betting Alice didn't actually exist - and that the second woman in the photo is also Agnes, for why else would Agnes get a grave marker?

The Ouroboros symbol makes one wonder if a Get Out situation is happening here, with the spouses the Doyles bring back being somehow converted into a way of sustaining the Doyle family's lives - or at least the patriarch's.  And naturally the racist would choose to use non-Europeans for that purpose, right?

Anyhow that's what I got right now.  Not yet talking any deeper themes on this one until a reveal occurs - you can see where they might be present, but it's too early to know where Moreno-Garcia is going with them....