Thursday, March 30, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

 

Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 18, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Silver Nitrate is the latest horror novel from Mexican-Canadian author Silvia Moreno-Garcia, who gained well deserved attention (and long overdue attention) for her recent horror novel Mexican Gothic. Mexican Gothic is not Moreno-Garcia's only great work in my opinion - basically her entire bibliography is phenomenal even as it spans multiple genres - so I was excited to get an early copy of this one. Like many of Moreno-Garcia's novels, Silver Nitrate is a period piece set in Mexico - in this case, taking place in the 1990s but reflecting some events in the 1950s. And while this novel deals with new ideas and concepts in its setting and plot - a film created by a Nazi occultist that was never finished stumbled upon by our pair of protagonists that when finished unleashes power and dangers that the protagonists could not have expected - the story still deals with some common Moreno-Garcia themes such as discrimination on color/race and sexist lines in Mexico, as well as ideas about love and family.

The result is, as usual for Moreno-Garcia, pretty strong, although I don't think the book ever gets particularly scary (if that's what you're looking for in your horror). Protagonists Montserrat, a woman struggling to help her ill sister and to survive as a talented sound editor in an industry that is both dying and more and more a boys club that refuses to let a woman like her in, and Tristán, a faded soap opera star who has fallen apart after an accident killed the troubled actress he dated and he took the blame for it, are excellent as they get involved helping an old Mexican horror director who once tried to make a movie with a ex-Nazi occultist. The story deals well with its themes as it shows how ridiculous the Nazi's and his follower's prejudices are as they try to steal ideas from those who are indigenous and of color and rationalize it away, and the magic involved works generally pretty well up to the story's conclusion. That said, it isn't quite as memorable as some of Moreno-Garcia's other works, so it's merely another strong novel rather than a truly great one.


---------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------
Montserrat is tremendously talented at her job - working as a sound editor in one of the few remaining studios making films in Mexico City (as opposed to the theaters just importing foreign films) - except not only is the job itself being made obsolete, but her boss and her coworkers are all chauvanistic men who look down on her just for being a woman who doesn't fit in. But she loves films, especially old horror ones, and doesn't really have any other path if she left the job.

Her best friend Tristán (who she has always had a crush on that he's never reciprocated) is a faded soap opera star whose career was cut short after his actress girlfriend was killed in a car accident and he was given the blame. Now Tristán is stuck doing voice actor work for animation and occasionally commercials, and finds himself haunted by the ghost of the girl who died, who the press and he himself won't let him forget.

But when Tristán comes across an old Mexican horror director living in his own building, one who he and Montserrat used to admire as kids, the two of them find their problems becoming far weirder and wilder in scope. For the director convinces them to use Montserrat's skills to finish his last horror film, an unfinished film written by an ex Nazi occultist for magical power, in hopes that it will reverse his bad luck. Yet while the director isn't wrong about the film, made of dangerous Silver Nitrate, being powerful, neither he nor Montserrat/Tristán could imagine the powers its completion would unleash, powers that will haunt the three of them until they're dead....or worse.
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Silver Nitrate's chapters take place from the perspectievs of Montserrat and Tristán, a pair of people struggling to make do and survive despite a world that is seemingly increasingly hostile to them. For Montserrat, that has to do a lot with a combination of sexism and globalization/modernization - her specialty in non-digital sound editing is going obsolete as newer tech evolves and as films stop being produced in Mexico and start being produced with better technology overseas, which means there's nowhere else she can ply her trade other than for a sexist as hell boss who would rather hire inferior boys than give work to her, the best editor he has...and even that job might not last for long. In a way, Montserrat is very much like the titular Silver Nitrate, a material once used to make old films on the cheap but was moved away from due to it being incredibly and dangerously flammable. For Tristán, he's a boy from Lebanese descent in a Mexico that doesn't love foreigners or those who aren't particularly light skinned, and while he got around that at one point with his pen name, when his girlfriend died in a car accident with him, he found himself taking the blame (helped along by the influence of that girlfriend's rich father, who whitewashed her drug-taking partying ways) and having his career largely ruined, leading to him mostly making money by appearing as a voice actor at this point. Both Montserrat and Tristán are souls who deserve more but have the bad aspects of modern Mexican culture holding them back, even as they try and survive and occasionally do more, like helping Montserrat's superstitious sister with her cancer or Tristán trying to remake his career without constantly being tied to the girl he lost. For Montserrat this results in her raging against the world, while for Tristán that results in him running constantly or trying to escape through a new girlfriend he isn't so into or willing to commit to (to Montserrat's frustration as he seems to ignore her during those times)

And so when the two of them stumble onto a magical old film which was once meant to provide power and immortality to the Nazi Occultist behind it, it's easy to see how the two can get caught up in it - for Tristán it's at worst case humoring the old director who thinks the magic is real and will turn his luck around, and for Montserrat, the idea of magic and being able to use your will to change things in the world is intoxicating. Needless to say since this is a horror novel, it isn't quite that easy, and the two of them wind up caught in a dangerous plot as the magic-obsessed and maybe magic wielding people involved with that film aren't quite as gone as the two realized and their actions awaken a dormant power. A power that, like the environment that oppresses them, is built upon lies, flattery and prejudice. Moreno-Garcia does an excellent job outlining how ridiculous this prejudice and magic system is, with the Nazi occultist stealing ideas from indigneous and outside peoples and finding ways to pretend even to himself they fit with his Aryan prejudices, prejudices that might've flattered the original trio involved with making the film (the director, an old white silent actress, and a younger actress with lighter skin and from a rich background) - but don't flatter Montserrat and Tristán, who don't it into this schema.

Moreno-Garcia does an excellent job with these themes of these people fighting through it all, and of the two Montserrat and Tristán realizing how together they must stand in order to make something out of it all, even if it isn't everything that they could have imagined. The story as I mentioned above isn't really scary but it's still done really well, with an excellent set of protagonists and antagonists and a final confrontation that is excellent and could easily work as the finale of a film. Really that's the thing about Silver Nitrate - it's a book about a movie that absolutely would work as a film, and a wonderful one at that, as Moreno-Garcia makes it really easy to picture things happening along with the strong character arcs along the way. Not my favorite of her works, but another winner for sure.


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