Gabino Iglesias Reviews Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Silver Nitrate, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey 978-0-59335-536-7, $28.00, 336pp, hc) July 2023. Cover by Fritz Metsch.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia seems to reinvent herself with every novel. Known for jumping around and mixing literary fiction, science fiction, crime, historical fiction, and horror, Moreno-Garcia, who has won numerous awards and built a huge readership that goes with her wherever she goes, obeys the demands of every narrative instead of sticking to the self-imposed regulations of genre. The result is an oeuvre that’s as diverse as it is fantastic. Silver Nitrate, her latest novel, brings together horror, a unique kind of romance, and historical fiction (heavy on both facts and fiction) while also playing around with elements of Mexican culture, occultism, film history, and magic. The result is a novel that further cements Moreno-Garcia as one of the leading voices in speculative fiction.
It’s 1993 and Montserrat – Momo to her few friends – works as a sound editor in Mexico City and is a huge fan of movies, especially horror. Unfortunately, she’s getting less and less work, and things aren’t going well because the film industry is declining and it’s still run by men. Momo’s life is mostly about her job, movies, and spending time with her best friend Tristán, a handsome soap opera star with a dark past who’s now doing voice work because he can’t get good roles. When Tristán goes to give his new neighbor his mail, which he got by mistake, he discovers his neighbor is Abel Urueta, a legendary cult horror movie director. Tristán knows Momo is a huge fan, so he sets up a dinner with the three of them. As they get to know each other and Urueta learns of Momo’s knowledge, skills, access to equipment, and passion for old movies, the director tells the two friends one of his biggest secrets – about an old, unfinished magical film he tried to make with the help of a Nazi occultists – and then enlists their help to perform a ritual that will help him finish the movie, which he claims can break the curse that ended his career and change their lives for the better. As they work on finishing the film, strange things start to happen, and Momo, who wants to shoot a documentary on Urueta for a new gig she hopes to get, goes down a dark rabbit hole of research into the occult, Nazis in Mexico City, and the cursed film Urueta never finished.
In a way, Silver Nitrate reads like a spiritual sister to Velvet was the Night, Moreno-Garcia’s superb 2021 noir. The novels are very different, and the latter doesn’t have any supernatural elements, but both novels take place in Mexico, both take place in the past, both have a complicated relationship at their core, and both deal, in different ways, with analog media. In the case of Silver Nitrate, the narrative develops during the transitional period between analog and digital technology, and the author clearly did a lot of research. Similarly, everything involving Nazis and occultism – and Nazi occultists – was brilliantly researched. In fact, one of the central figures of the novel, Nazi occultist Wilhem Ewers, serves as a vehicle for a deep exploration of occultism that includes many real individuals like Helena Blavatsky and Alastair Crowley.
Mexico City is alive and almost palpable in this novel. The food, places, music, history, and people are all very present, and that speaks volumes about Moreno-Garcia’s talent for description and atmosphere. Also, there are a few words in Spanish that give this an even greater sense of authenticity. Lastly, a few unique cultural figures and elements – seeing singer Gloria Trevi here was a treat – add a very nice touch that takes the narrative into a new level and show just how much attention to detail Moreno-Garcia paid while constructing the story.
While Moreno-Garcia played around with a plethora of genres here, she didn’t shy away from the darkness, creepiness, and gore horror fans love. There are plenty of scenes that deliver on those things, and they also help amplify the emotional angle of the novel. Silver Nitrate is wildly engaging, dark, unique, and gripping. Moreno-Garcia has been consistently delivering great novels for years – Mexican Gothic, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, and Velvet Was the Night are three perfect examples – but Silver Nitrate might just surpass them all.
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin TX. He is the author of Zero Saints and Coyote Songs and the editor of Both Sides. His work has been nominated to the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His short stories have appeared in a plethora of anthologies and his non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and CrimeReads. His work has been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He’s been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University’s online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
This review and more like it in the September 2023 issue of Locus.
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