Prime Meridian by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Prime Meridian is a novella by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a Mexican-Canadian author whose work is getting more attention these days due to the success of 2020's "Mexican Gothic" (my review here). I've been a big fan of Moreno-Garcia's work and have read nearly all of it - all but this novella. Her work spans numerous genres - Magical Realism, Noir, Vampires, Romance, Horror, etc. - but has always been really good, with stories taking place generally or setting in Mexico, and so when my elibrary finally got a copy of this novella in stock to allow me to complete her long-fiction bibliography I jumped at the chance.
And Prime Meridian is really interesting - a character study of a young woman whose future path has been sidetracked and whose dreams of Mars seem dashed, with only grips at the fading past left in her life. All of that is interspersed with scripts from an old B adventure movie taking place on the red planet, as the story deals with how women used to be trapped and often still are trapped just for making a single "mistake" in their past.
Quick Plot Summary: Amelia has always dreamt about Mars, where on a Class B Visa, she could fly to the planet and try to grow crops as an investor in the red planet. But though she once was a promising young student in college scholarship studying land and food systems, her mother's illness forced her to drop out. Now she lives with her drop-out older sister and her two nieces, making money only by posing as a friend for people on a friend-finding app and by donating blood for the rich and wealthy. There seems to be nowhere for Amelia to go, as she plays friend to an old forgotten actress, and certainly not Mars, even as the past refuses to release her from its grip.....
Thoughts: Prime Meridian is a character study essentially of Amelia, a young woman (she's 25) who comes from a lower class family who was told her whole life that she, unlike her failure of a sister, had to stay on the straight and narrow to really make it for herself, or so she was told. But though she dreamt of escaping it all on Mars, it all fell apart - her rich boyfriend ghosted her and disappeared, her mother grew ill forcing her to drop out, and her no good sister refused to provide any help, even forcing Amelia to pay for rent in their mom's old apartment in the end. And thus for one "mistake" that wasn't even a mistake, Amelia finds herself stuck not just in neutral, but in reverse, as she feels misery in distress at her situation. And the past refuses to let her go, as her old boyfriend uses the friendr app to reconnect with her for an affair, despite him clearly being unwilling to take her seriously.
Amelia is contrasted with an old woman Lucía who she acts as a professional friend to, a former actress who once acted years ago in a movie set on Mars, which was supposed to be a prestige pic, but due to meddling, resulted in a flop b-movie adventure flick instead with her role reduced from the potential fo an explorer into that of just the damsel in distress. Scripted scenes from the movie - and an alternate version - are interspersed throughout the story, as the novella clearly contrasts how just like Amelia, Lucía's career was essentially ruined by choices out of her control (the film script changing in her case), even if she managed to get some wealth from marriage in the end. Seemingly just for being a woman, Amelia isn't allowed to get a fresh start despite doing nothing wrong....until the very end, which provides some hope. The whole thing is a really interesting package, and well worth a read.
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