OK, let’s start off with Rebecca, but then go off on The Yellow Wallpaper and now cross it with Lovecraft/Eldritch horror (sans tentacles, fortunately). Sound like fun?
Yes, it was, and especially because of the heroine. Very much mid-century modern, wealthy Mexican socialite Noemi Taboada has grown quite bored with her social scene. A budding interest in anthropology aside, her life seems to be one party after another, one fatuous twit after another.
So when her father receives a plea for help from her cousin Catalina, recently and mysteriously married to a wealthy stranger, she immediately sets off for High Place, set in the silver-bearing mountains of central Mexico. She’s just there to check on her welfare, although they were closer when she was young, but it seems that her situation is a bit . . .complicated.
Something is clearly off, but her cousin may or may need to be rescued. There is this one guy, somehow related to the groom, who is the only one ever willing to take her into town, but his motives are unclear as well. And have I mentioned that there are relatively recent mass graves near the family’s mining site? And what’s with all these creepy British folk in the heart of Mexico? Good thing she’s got a fierce smoking habit, and odd how the housekeeper can sniff it out from anywhere. Hold your ground, girl, it’s the 50’s, you’re entitled.
Yeah, so this was a good ride, and a Gothic unlike any other, as the title implies.
