Mexican Gothic-Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A short novel that transplants the tropes of gothic novels to Mexico, then completely turns them upside down. It is a testament to how well the novel lays out it’s clues and breadcrumbs that I didn’t see the twist coming, but it made total sense. A fun, well written genre mash up, I breezed through this in a couple of days and found it really enjoyable.
5-things-to-steal
- Use tropes against reader. Distract them into thinking they know where the story is going
- Pull the rug out from under the reader.
- Change genre halfway through story
- Seed ideas into early part of novel so genre shift makes sense.
- Make metaphors literal and horrible- in this case the rot of colonialism becomes actual rot.