During a summer where the world seems like it’s on fire, what we need is a book that burns like silver nitrate. In case some of you don’t know, in the early days of movies, the film was made with silver nitrate, which is highly flammable and dangerous. It’s also the title of the new novel by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It’s so hot it’ll make you think it’s cooling off outside.
Silver Nitrate also isn’t an arbitrary title. The substance, and its use in film, particularly old film, is central to the novel. How can this be? Silver is often used in witchcraft. It makes sense that it could be used in connection with the magic of movies.
Like in her earlier novel Signal to Noise, it takes place in Mexico City. Technology—in this case, audio cassettes-- and witchcraft intersect. There are also intersections with a lot of real life strangeness that is so well researched and presented in such rich detail that it’s hard to tell where the reality ends and the fantastic begins. There’s occultism—Aleister Crowley is evoked, along with Nazis and the incredible world of Mexican horror movies.
I’m kinda obsessed with this twisted branch of the cinematic arts. I wouldn’t call myself an expert, but I knew right away that the character Abel Urueta was named for the actor Abel Salazar and the director Chano Urueta. (Which reminds me I need to see El Barón de Terror–called The Brainiac in K. Gordon Murray’s dubbed English version–again sometime soon).
It also has one of the most badass, intelligent female heroes ever (somehow the antiquated term “heroine” isn’t quite right here). Some reviewers have complained about Silvia’s characters not being likeable enough—but speaking as a writer, a good fictional character doesn’t have to be “likeable,” they need to have a knack for interesting trouble, and entertaining ways of getting out of it. Montserrat, Momo to her friends, is amazing. I would like to see more of her.
What I enjoyed most wasn’t the noir/thriller aspects, or the imaginative and original horror elements (Stephen King, watch out), but that it presents the joy of investigation and doing research. And in the pre-internet era! It’s an intellectual adventure. I was hesitant to say that, since the mantra of the bestseller reader as imagined but the major publishers is “I don’t like to think when I read.” But Silver Nitrate is a thrill ride, and those thrills will cause a few synapses to fire triggering the imagination. Some readers appreciate that.
I also need to make it clear that even though it deals with what some call trash culture, this is not a trashy novel—not the literary equivalent of telenovela or a grade Z horror flick. This book is a class act, and so is its author.
All this, and it will make you forget about this being the hottest summer on record, too!
Ernest Hogan is trying to sell a trashy novel, and his first story collection, Pancho Villa’s Flying Circus, is coming out soon.
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