Monday, May 1, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

 


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 April 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.

The Haunting of Alejandra is a short novel of Magical Realism and Horror written by Mexican-American author V. Castro. The story follows a woman - the eponymous Alejandra - who is miserable for reasons she feels unable to explain to anyone: she relies upon her husband for support, a husband who insists that she should be grateful for everything he does for her, she struggles to be a good mother to children who she loves and yet always feels wanted for more from, and she is stuck in a state she didn't grow up in without any family or friends of her own to rely upon. In addition to depression, Alejandra finds herself haunted by a strange spirit who takes the form of a Mexican folk legend, La Llorona, who appears to her and begs her to conduct self harm. The resultent novel uses Alejandra's story, as well as the interspersed stories of her ancestors, to tell a tale dealing with generational traumas, systemic oppression of women and minorities, and depression, as Alejandra discovers the roots behind her depression and haunting with the help of a therapist who specializes in more than the scientic method and believes in what Alejandra claims to be seeing.

The result is actually a pretty effective, if perhaps slightly too short novel for all the impact that The Haunting of Alejandra tries to have. Alejandra's story is portrayed very well and she's a very easy to sympathize with character, as a young woman who has never been given the support she deserves at any point in her life - from her Christian Foster Family, to the husband who lavished her with gifts at first but then seemed to just demand she become tied to him and that she appreciate that, to the biological mother who gave her up at birth - and her depression is very understandable. The demonic horror tied to that depression works as well, as does the book's tying of that depression to generational traumas, traumas that source themselves all the way back to colonial oppresion and earlier sexism. And the book's use of a therapist, especially one who merges modern medical techniques with the spiritual methods of a Curandera, is excellent, as the therapist helps guide Alejandra towards a resolution that allows her to move past the horror. It's a book that works well with its message and themes and ties to Mexican and Mexican-American history, even if the short page length makes some transformations occur rather quickly.

I'll try to give more specifics after the jump.


----------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------
Alejandra's world is miserable. She now lives in Philadelphia with her three kids and husband Matthew, but has no one else. Even worse, she has nothing else to do - at Matthew's partial insistence she quit working years ago when she became a mother, and with the move from Texas it's not like she can dstart again. Moreover, Matthew insists that she doesn't need to work and that she should merely be grateful for the fact that she financially doesn't have to thanks to him...not that he will ever listen or let her explain that she has wants of her own. And she's basically had no ability to satisfy any wants of her own for ages, to the point where she isn't sure of what those wants might be - all she knows is what others want of her, with her children wanting her to be their mother and to demand things constantly and Matthew wanting her to cater to him and all his wants, even if Matthew is in no way physically abusive or sexually demanding.

And now she's seeing things, like a demon silhouette out of the corner of her eye, whispering to her to cause herself pain, to commit suicide. Other times she dreams of seeing women who look like her, but older, floating in water, staring at her, begging her to invoke their power for....something.

Alejandra needs help and knows it has to change, and so she looks up and finds one possible source of help: a therapist Melanie who also advertises herself as a Curandera, a spiritual healer. And in opening herself up to Melanie, Alejandra soon finds things that might make life lighter...and begins to understand that the feelings she is having aren't abnormal and might have their roots in her ancestry - an ancestry of women who have been oppressed, who have all never had support from their own mothers, and who have been haunted by wants and the supernatural for ages.

Understanding this ancestry may help Alejandra move forward...but the demon haunting her will not accept Alejandra escaping its clutches so easily, not when Alejandra's misery and her children's fear, like the fear of her ancestors, is all so tasty to consume. To stop that demon, Alejandra will need to take a deliberate dangerous action to not only change her life, but the destiny of her entire bloodline....
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The Haunting of Alejandra jumps back and forth in time, with most chapters centering around Alejandra in the present, but occasional chapters jumping back sometimes centuries into the times of her ancestors, like her Mayan ancestor Atzi who was raped and enslaved by a Spanish conquerer and made a devil's bargain that began her bloodline's curse in the 1500s, the story of her grandmother Frances who abandoned her biological mother Cathy, the story about how Cathy became pregnant with Alejandra and why she gave Alejandra away, and even the story of her ancestor Flor, who left her family for a time to fight in the Mexican Revolution amongst men, including among the very real life historical figure Colonel Amelio Robles, a trans man who accepted Flor and fought with her. Through these jumps back in time we see how the depression and generational trauma of their family has made its impact upon each of them - which isn't helped along by the literal demon who is haunting their family and trying to feed off their misery. All of these ancestors struggled with sexist times, with being forced into roles and positions they didn't want, and all wanted better for their children - sometimes through attepting to give their children to someone else to better raise - even when what they tried to wound up being more hurtful than helpful, and thus only continued the generational trauma. Their stories are all unique and yet similar and its really easy to feel for them all in their struggles, especially as the reader sees them generally - but not always - struggle with the results they achieve.

And then there's Alejandra, a woman who struggles with more modern day versions of the same phenomenon. She wound up in a puritan evangelical foster family, one who didn't broker any disagreement with their ways and didn't really provide support to her as a child (Alejandra not being religiously Christian, being secretly Bi, and being Latino didn't help). She found what she thought was love in a man like Matthew who offered her gifts...and mistook being given things that he liked and that others said were good for love, resulting in her winding up in a loveless marriage where she's expected to be a stay at home mother without an income and just appreciate all Matthew does for her. She loves her kids...and yet at the same time, feels like she can't keep up with their constant demands that often contradict one another and that she's a bad mother for doing so. And she has no other friends or family - the one thing she thought she found was a surprise reconnection with her biological mother Cathy, but Matthew ripped them away from her when they moved to Philly. It's small wonder that Alejandra deals with depression, even if she didn't deal with a literal demon haunting her and trying to feed off of it...and to feed off of similar fears and anxieties of her children.

But Alejandra is perfectly capable of feeling better, she just needs a guide to help her find her way and to allow her to figure out what she actually wants. In that, she finds Melanie, a therapist who not only is board certified, but also helps with Curandera (shamanistic) methods, such as building an alter and meditation. In Melanie she finds someone who listens to her and doesn't disbelieve her, who offers her ideas and support and doesn't shame her, and honestly is willing to go far beyond what most people will find from their therapists in terms of the degree of help she offers, and how willing to be on call she is. And with her help, they prove that a person can find their own way, even an unconventional way, to get better, even if that person's depression isn't just menial, but is magical, as it is here, with the magical realism of the book being a literal demon feeding on the family's generational misery. It's a pretty good message that this book carries from beginning to end, and I appreciated that.

The book has some flaws - as I mentioned above, the book kind of has Melanie super attentive to Alejandra to a point that kind of seems ridiculous and doesn't quite jive with most therapists people will find out there, and the impact the therapy has on Alejandra is probably a bit too abrupt to be realistic. But well, its fiction with a message rather than non-fiction, so these sins are forgivable, and everyone's attitudes and issues here are portrayed fairly well, resulting in a strong use of magical realism to take on a very serious and apt message in these days. A worthy read.

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