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Little Women: On Screen & Virtual Book Club Recap

December 14, 2020

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Dear readers, this is now the third time in that many days I’ve made this confession (although the event in question only happened twice): I didn’t finish the reading. I didn’t finish (and barely started) the reading for (virtual) Advent study. And I didn’t finish reading Little Women before book club. I still haven’t in fact, but I’m thoroughly enjoying it (and expect to finish later today). I’m in good company because not only was it the first time Ashley and I didn’t finish the book, it’s also the first time no one, that’s right, NO ONE finished the book! To be fair, it was a reread for everyone, and we still had a great discussion (more on that below).

We don’t have a full line up of 2021 Virtual Book Club Selections, but we do have your mission ready for you, should you choose to accept and join us at 7:30 p.m. CST on February 12, 2021: Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy, and the follow up novella, A Court of Frost and Starlight. Does it make total sense to follow up a book club where zero people finished the book with a trilogy plus a novella? No not at all. Here’s what does make sense though: we’ve been raving about these books for years, several of our regular virtual book club attendees have already read them (including all of Friday’s attendees), and THE NEXT BOOK COMES OUT FEBRUARY 16! Is this self serving? Yup. Do Ashley and I really need to read this series a sixth (I think) time? Also yes, a thousand times, yes. Also, darlings, when we get together to chat about this, there will be spoilers. It’s happening, so prepare yourselves. You have just shy of two months, but if you read the description and think this is up your alley, maybe wait until you have a few days off and then consume the series. I *may* have read the trilogy and then immediately started over and reread the whole thing again. If you get stuck on a piece of it, DM us. We’ll help you through, as we’ve done for one reader already. We are pumped for the new book and want you to join us for this wild ride! Sign up here to let us know you’re in, or at least considering it!

Back to our book club recap on Little Women: In addition to being the first book club where no one finished the book (recently), this was also the first book club where we didn’t talk as much about the book. We discussed the sisters and the family and what drew is to the story originally, but we focused more of our conversation on the movies. There were some loves and hates for the 2019 film, which Ashley and I saw together in the theater, after having a brunch meeting in public (remember when we could do these things?!). There was conversation as to the merits versus nostalgia of the 1994 adaptation. Here’s the thing – the movies are very different from each other and from the book. It’s a 19 hour audiobook (read by Christina Ricci), so cutting it down to a 2 hour or so movie means cutting a ton of content. Like any true bibliophiles, we decided the cutting was suboptimal, even if we did (mostly) enjoy the films. I may have been partially joking in the book club section of our posts about Little Women with the pickled limes and such, but as I type and listen to the soundtrack to the 1994 film, it warms me up from the inside out and brings me such joy as well as showing me the film in my head as the score plays on in the background. I got the VHS one Christmas, and not just any, but the one in the nice plastic case, and I watched it SO, so many times (the paper case would have been destroyed). The nostalgia is real because the film is good, and I still adore it, but the text is SO much better (as it usually is, le sigh).

One piece I have especially enjoyed about rereading Little Women is finding the passages of dialogue from some of the more memorable scenes (like when Amy burns Jo’s manuscript or when Jo refuses Laurie) and remembering that the screen writers used the original lines, which says they were paying attention. I also am reading an edition with a very interesting forward that I thoroughly enjoyed. This forward includes details like notes on the editing that occurred as new editions were published, specifically that the 1880 version included “innumerable text changes….Alcott’s vigorous slang, colloquialisms, and regionalisms were replaced by a blander, more refined and ‘ladylike’ prose.” According to the editor, the 1880 version is the edition most modern readers know, with the now smoothed edges of Alcott’s imagination that were formerly rough, and her voice toned down. The note on the text states that the editor decided to present the text in its original, uncorrected form, using the 1868 and 1869 texts with renumbered chapters due to the inclusion of the two volumes in one book. It was / is delightful, and although 20+ years later, I can’t swear to the version I read back then, there are definitely parts of this edition that feel brand new to me, and what a gift that is in a classic, especially knowing I’m reading an original version of the text rather than one that feels dolled up for a dance.

I am so glad that Ashley chose Little Women as our focus this month, and really pleased with the edition I chose to read. I give both a solid four stars and am likely to reread this again, probably in less than 20 years this time, and I want to watch the 1994 and 2019 versions again. The soundtrack I keep mentioning is also likely to join me in the coming weeks as I continue to hold up at home with my little men.

What well-loved book have you reread and been pleasantly surprised to love more after a reread? (Little Women and A Court of Thorns and Roses are both included in my answer!)

~Nikki

Book club was excellent, and I loved discussing Little Women with my people. But there comes a time, on most days of the week/month/year, when I don’t have those people at my beck and call to discuss the wonderful world of the March family. And in those times when I feel the pull to be with the Marches, the screen is where I find solace. I’m not talking about my kindle screen, though I have been known to watch movies there when necessary. I love to watch how others have interpreted these characters and made them come alive for audiences around the globe.

My first experience was in 1994, seeing the Gillian Armstrong directed version where Winona Ryder plays Jo, Christian Bale plays Laurie, and Susan Sarandon plays Marmee. This is, I think, the movie version most people between the ages 60 and 25 talk about when they discuss the movie Little Women. It is, for both myself and Nikki, a whopping bowl of nostalgia when watching this film or listening to the soundtrack. It would have been 3rd or 4th grade when I saw this movie in the theatre for the first time, a theatre that has now been turned into a church, but I digress, which was right around the time when I first read Little Women in its entirety, not the abridged version many classics have undergone. Let’s be real, I wanted those 36 Accelerated Reader points like nobody’s business, and look where it got me. We love the 1994 version for the romance and the sisterhood and the handsome male lead who looks rather debonair with either a book or weird facial hair covering half his face. But, we tolerate how Kirsten Dunst grows up to become Samantha Mathis, and neither one truly conveys the facets of the youngest March sister who in the book changes and grows so very much. But, why don’t we get to see the end of the book? Where’s the family at Plumfield celebrating Marmee? If you love this version as much as I do, you can watch it for free with commercials through Prime and IMDB at the link above.

Last year at this time, Greta Gerwig’s interpretation of Louisa May Alcott’s most popular novel was released in theatres and Nikki and I went on a field trip in January to see it together. There are pictures, we can prove it. We wore our Puffin in Bloom shirts. And we’ve admitted that the first time you watch this version, and it’s nothing like the 1994 version you’re expecting, you can be a little shocked, a little intrigued, and then you ponder over your feelings for a few days, and realize that the point of this movie is not the same as the point of the Gillian Armstrong version. Gerwig assumes going into the movie that you know what’s going to happen in the end, so the jumping of timelines as you watch Jo March reflect on her own life, as played by Saoirse Ronan, while she watches her book be published is a dare, and it pays off. I appreciate that there is only one actor playing one role, rather than how Armstrong ages Amy by choosing another actor. Florence Pugh is top notch and quickly becoming one of my favorite actresses. (So ready to see her play Yelena Belova in Black Widow like, now, damn it pandemic that must not be named.) I have much more respect for Amy as a character. She undergoes the changes of both age and place and can still be childlike and fun in the scene where she meets Laurie in Europe and then demands his respect as a grown woman in the following scenes. Worth watching the dressing down of a 19th century man (who looks like a boy, sweet, sweet, Timothée Chalamet) by signing up for a Starz trial, free for seven days.

During my time in California, when Nikki and I were obsessing over Poldark and other PBS Masterpiece shows, I signed up for PBS Passport to catch up with the seasons I had missed. During that time I also decided to watch the 2017 three episode mini-series of Little Women produced by the BBC. You can currently watch it free on Amazon Prime, and you should if you’re remotely interested in watching Michael Gambon as Mr. Laurence and Angela Lansbury as Aunt March. The acting is great but it’s a much quieter interpretation of the book than Gerwig’s, and for me, less memorable. Though it could have something to do with my watching it while I folded laundry.

Now, for those versions I haven’t seen that I would be remiss to not mention so let’s view them in reverse chronological order:

2018: A modern interpretation of the lives of the March sisters featuring no actor I have ever heard of.

1986 – 1987: Japanese animated 4 season series directed by Fumio Kurokawa found on Amazon Prime Video as Tales of Little Women

1978: A 2 episode mini-series with William Shatner as Professor Bhaer. I bet I can get Adam to watch it with me. The DVD cover states that it won an Emmy. Things you learn late night on the internet.

1970: BBC Series of 9 episodes where it’s reported some b-roll is obviously from the modern era cause there are some cars on the streets of Europe. Whoops.

1958: Film Version where Florence Henderson of Brady Bunch fame plays Meg March.

1949: Where Elizabeth Taylor plays Amy.

1933: Academy Award winner Katharine Hepburn plays tomboy Jo March.

1918: Tagline: A Picturization of Alcott’s Immortal Story.

1917: United Kingdom Silent film.

And now, dear readers, you’re not going to have to scour the internet for more information and links about these versions because I have happily provided them for you. If ever you want to dissect a version, let me know, I’ll do my best to accommodate your theories and interpretations!

~Ashley

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Bookish Life

Sequels, Modern Adaptations, and Novelizations

December 10, 2020

Today’s post is not going to run like a typical Thursday book review and opinion piece. This is the Thursday that we’re fitting in the several modern versions/retellings of Little Women by Louisa May Alcott that we’ve read or put on our TBR, including novels about the Alcott family. Regardless of our ability to read all the books, we can not wait for you to join us TOMORROW for Virtual Book Club where we will be discussing the original in all its literary and cinematic glory. As Amy March would say, we’ll start precipitously at 7:30 p.m. CST on Friday December 11th for those who sign up here.

Most readers of Little Women in the United States realize that the book they read is rather large, between 500 – 600 printed pages, and that the book is broken up into two volumes, Little Women and Good Wives. The reasoning behind that is that in the United Kingdom when Volume Two was produced the publisher wanted a title and they published it under the title Good Wives. Alcott had nothing to do with that decision, and in 1880 both volumes were published together in the United States as the Little Women story we know and love today. However, Little Women and Good Wives are still being published separately in the United Kingdom and Canada. (What’s up with that, eh?!) Thankfully, Alcott did write two official sequels to Little Women, Little Men and Jo’s Boys.

Little Men, or Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys was published in 1871, two years after the second volume of Little Women was published. It follows the students of Professor Friedrich Bhaer and Mrs. Jo Bhaer, their children, and their family at their boarding school of Plumfield. I read this book during elementary school and have never re-visited the characters like I have the March sisters at Orchard House. By following the twelve boys at school, we are taught how they are growing their characters despite their scrapes and disagreements. Alcott was able to comment on the concept of home schooling where students are treated and taught as individuals rather than as a group. I feel like it would be a great way to re-imagine the way we homeschool in the pandemic life of 2020.

Jo’s Boys and How They Turned Out, a Sequel to Little Men was published in 1886, is the final book in the unofficial Little Women trilogy, and follows Jo’s children, nieces and nephew, and students as they embark on life as adults. I also read this book as a child but have never revisited it. I think the collection of characters and how the plots of their life stories didn’t intersect except for their connection to Plumfield disappointed me, but I’m not opposed to revisiting the title in the future. All I have to say is that between Little Men and Jo’s Boys, Nikki will have all the epilogue she could possibly handle. [Nikki here: I think this is Ashley either challenging me or shoulding me, as I’ve not read either. So much side eye to her!]

My two favorite re-imaginings of the March family story will get the attention they deserve in the following two Thursdays, but I wanted to make sure that you, our dear readers, receive the gifts of my internet research and deep dive reading. Here are some very honorable mentions:

Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy: A Graphic Novel by Rey Terciero and Bre Indigo is a graphic novel that I thoroughly enjoyed on Kindle. Published in 2019, the March sisters are a blended family. Mr. March was a widower with young Meg when he met single Mom of Jo, Mrs. March at a party. They combined families in New York City and had two more daughters, Beth and Amy together. While Mr. March is deployed overseas, the March sisters tackle the real-life modern issues of racism, classism, childhood cancer, financial struggles, bullying, and coming of age as LGBTQ. It is still a story of family, love, and hope, but I question whether or not it is best read by those of the ages 8 – 12 because of the implication that internet pornography exists. Definitely read it before you approve it for your elementary students, but I feel that most middle schoolers are already discussing these issues, and this book handles the lessons with grace, understanding, and an accepting love for all the little women as they are. I have not read, but will mention, the 2020 graphic novel Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort of) by Kathleen Gros also tackles the concept of identity, so don’t get them confused.

Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz is exactly what you think it is. It’s the romantic tale that many readers of Little Women hold sacred in the deepest, darkest, fan-fiction-y-est recesses of their broken hearts over Jo Bhaer. That Jo was to finally realize she was in love with Laurie. Read this tale for what it is: a chaste, happily ever after with characters we know and love. The premise: Jo’s publisher has requested a sequel for her surprisingly popular novel for young women and Laurie takes her to New York City for a week to pull her out of her writer’s block and give her all the grand-gestures his high society connections can provide – like tickets to a reading by the (in)famous Charles Dickens! – to prove his feelings. Stohl and de la Cruz seem to combine the characters of the Alcott sisters with the March sisters to form their versions of Meg, Jo, and Amy and I love it. I also love the spattering of double entendre and punny turns of phrase. It was definitely a meets expectations type of book, but as a reader who thinks Alcott’s wishes that Jo never marry should be canon, I don’t intend on re-reading this adorable adaptation but heartily recommend this 2020 publication to anyone wanting to deepen their relationship with the March family.

More to the Story by Hena Khan is a 2020 release and modern re-imagining of Little Women where an American-Muslim family is living in Georgia and Jameela Mirza is chosen as the feature editor of her middle school newspaper. I checked out the audiobook from the library but never found the time to listen to it as I wanted. It has 75 ratings for an average of 4.8 stars on Amazon. If you’re looking for more diversity in your adaptations you can find it here!

We’re already scheduled to bring you a Monday post about the life and lasting influence of the prolific author Louisa May Alcott, but I wanted to leave you with a list of some interesting deep dives, novelizations about the lives of the Alcotts themselves!

The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott by Kelly O’Connor McNees was a find for me at McKay Used Bookstore many years ago. I read it and it’s been on my shelf ever since. I even invested $2 of an Amazon gift card for the Kindle version at the beginning of this year with the intention of re-reading about twenty-two year old Louisa’s adventures in life and love in the summer of 1855. This is a fictionalized telling based on research of Alcott’s life. I obviously highly recommend.
The Other Alcott by Elise Hooper is her 2017 debut novel that follows the life and artistic career of the youngest Alcott sister, Abigail May Alcott. I have downloaded it twice from the Overdrive Library and have yet to make time to read it. From the internet searches about May Alcott, and the descriptions of this novel, I feel like Florence Pugh’s interpretation of the character of Amy March in the recent Greta Gerwig movie is a respectful nod to the woman who inspired the often-overlooked March sister.
The Revelation of Louisa May by Michaela MacColl was an inexpensive Kindle book purchase in late 2019 that has been sitting on my TBR. The teenaged Louisa is left in charge of the Alcott household while her mother travels over the summer to make income for the family and she is left to juggle her father, a traveler on the Underground Railroad, the murder of a slave catcher, and the possibility of love all on her own. There’s only 28 reviews for the book on Amazon, but the 4.3 average stars gives me hope for a solid “meets expectations” read.

And, because I would feel remiss in my duties to you if I didn’t place these titles on your radar, here is a list of adaptations that might make you smile…

Are you like me and take your love of a title to an unhealthy level of obsession?

~Ashley

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First Monday

A Warm, Holiday Theme

December 7, 2020

After being sufficiently creeped out (in the best way) last week and enjoying my reward book, I’ve been enjoying digging into Little Women by Louisa May Alcott for the first time in decades! It is just the cozy reading break I need when I’m struggling to balance all of my pressing tasks this time of year. Join us THIS Friday to chat Little Women, definitely the book, maybe the movie(s), and we’ll see what else we can fit in on December 11 starting at 7:30 p.m. CST for those who sign up here.

Ready for a sneak peak behind the Heart.Wants.Books curtain? When we were plotting out our blog plans in mid-2019, we decided that birthday months meant a lot of choices for the birthday girl (woman, whatever). So, in July, I got extra sway, and Ashley and I decided to go hard for cozy, comfort, and calm in December and I told her to run wild. It’s been fun to watch her build out a theme month, and even select a Virtual Book Club pick to match, one that wouldn’t really should on anyone (as multiple film versions suffice and it’s likely a re-read) in this (normally more) hectic season.

I’m really looking forward to each title and post this month more than I have for a bit because my book buddy has been given license to share deep dives into a title she loves dearly. How is this different from usual? Usually we select titles we’re both interested in, and while there is a lot of overlap, and we’re also open to new experiences (see also: horror), it’s fun for me to re-experience a love of my book buddy, and to do so in a way I haven’t in the past. I’m very confident I’m going to enjoy this month and I hope you will too.

I can hear some of you yelling at me through your screens. Dear readers, I know Ashley’s birthday isn’t until January. Here’s the rest of the behind the curtain: Originally we’d planned to launch the blog July 2019 with Jane in July (or was it Austen in August, I don’t recall), but this and that happened and July became January. I hope you’ll agree that Jane in January is far superior to Jane in July, and gives many more options than Austen in August. So, since we decided together to let Jane dominate January, we also decided together that Ashley’s birthday privileges would move to December, so she gets extra celebration for her sacrifice!

If you’re joining us on Friday, and I dearly hope you are, are you reading or rereading (or perhaps watching or rewatching, or a combination) in preparation for our discussion of Little Women?

~Nikki

Graphic Novels, Modern Retellings, and Novelizations about Alcott’s life
December 10

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Virtual Book Club Pick for Friday, December 11

March by Geraldine Brooks
December 17

Meg & Jo by Virginia Kantra
December 24

Special Feature: On Reading Goals
December 31

Darling Readers, if you talk to my mother and ask her what my favorite book is, she will tell you that it’s Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I’ve always considered myself a bookish, independent Jo, I’ve had a few moments as a conforming Meg, and lately I’ve really begun to appreciate and emulate Amy in a way I hadn’t considered before. Somewhat thanks to Florence Pugh in the Greta Gerwig 2019 film interpretation, but let’s save discussing how allowing yourself to just unapologetically BE who you are is as important as sacrificing your one vanity for the family. (Like Jo’s hair disaster.)

As per my usual habit, I have been preparing for my theme month since we agreed upon it, but I haven’t written a dang thing. During our discussion, we/I wanted it to be Holiday themed since Nikki navigates Kindle Unlimited for our December “Christmas Smut” reads and I follow along for the ride. I couldn’t think of a much more December themed comfort read to deep dive than my own personal favorite title. The first line of the book is: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.” And I can feel that angst deep in my own soul. (Thankfully, I have a mom whose love language is gifts and Christmas is her favorite, too!)

There are multiple bookish adaptations and re-interpretations on the docket, including last December’s new release, Virginia Kantra’s Meg & Jo that was a top 4 fiction title of 2019 for me. I can’t wait to bring that to you in the coming weeks, because it is glorious in how modernity doesn’t much change the issues plaguing the March sisters. We are also bringing you a Pulitzer Prize winner with Geraldine Brooks’ March. That’s only two stand-alone titles for this month because we’re going to pack in the other days with some other retellings and a slapdash of information about Alcott herself. I am so excited to talk in depth on Friday at Virtual Book Club because I don’t feel like I have ever dived as deep into this story as I have in preparation for this month and it’s itching to get out.

So, please, read or re-read the original if you like, watch a movie or two (we have a Monday post dedicated to Little Women on screen and stage), or listen to the audiobook version as Mom and I will be doing today on our drive from New Orleans to Nashville, then join us for Virtual Book Club on Friday. If you can’t join us then, please join us during the month for titles you’re curious about and interact with us on social media so I know I’m not alone with Laurie knowing “I was meant to be a part of the March family.”

~Ashley

PS: For your auditory pleasure, here is a Spotify Link to my public playlist that combines music from soundtracks and popular composers of Alcott’s time. Y’welcome.

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Book Review

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

December 4, 2020

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Sometimes you want to crawl into the pages of a book because it’s like a warm hug (did you just hear Olaf, because that’s definitely what I meant), and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott is one of those books. I want Orchard House to open its arms doors to me and welcome me into it’s familiar, loving embrace. As much as I adore the 1994 and 2019 movies, they don’t consume me in the way a book does (or the way some other literary houses want to – we’ll come back to that). Join us to dig into Little Women, definitely the book, maybe the movie(s), and we’ll see what else we get around to in EIGHT DAYS on Friday, December 11 starting at 7:30 p.m. CST for those who sign up here.

Oh dear readers, I don’t even know where to start, so I’m just jumping right in to it. I really, really enjoyed Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia! I didn’t know much about it before reading it. Anne Bogel was raving about this gothic novel with Jane Eyre vibes, but set in Mexico, and one of my closest friends adored it enough to send me a hardback copy as a surprise! Ashley and I discussed, put it in November because we were reading from holds and picking what we thought were titles about strong women (it is). And then…I saw it was classified as horror. (I recognize this is what I get for saying I don’t read horror back in the fall but I don’t have to like it.) I stand by what I said on Monday before I finished the book that evening, it feels more paranormal than horror, but also, I get why it’s labeled horror. AND, if this is horror, please send me a few recommendations along these lines!

In the past, some books we’ve discussed have a strong sense of place, to the point that the location is just almost a character of its own. Well, High Place, the home where the vast majority of the action in Mexican Gothic takes place, is 100% a character in this story! It’s creepy, but (at least to me) in a delightfully appropriate way (meaning I read until 11 p.m. mostly went right to sleep). Noemí’s dreams did not join me, but oh how I loved them. It was this delightful mystery I was trying to unscramble from the time she arrived at the house and the lush descriptions of the house and the Doyle family began. And let me just claim, without spoilers – I had part of it 100% spot on (pun intended)! I was thinking with too much modern science and not enough alchemy (thank you All Souls Trilogy). (I’ve also seen this classified as fantasy and I do not approve of that at all.)

But what is Mexican Gothic actually about though? Glad you asked! Noemí is a carefree heiress in 1950s Mexico City, enjoying parties and avoiding marriage. When her father gets a very unusual letter from her recently married cousin, they bargain for Noemí to be his representative and go visit her cousin to get to the bottom of the matter and ensure she gets the (psychiatric) help she needs. Noemí goes to the rural mining village and stays with her cousin and her new in-laws in their very old world, European mansion with the eurocentric attitudes and perspectives most of them possess (let’s be real, some have eurocentric attitudes, others are just plain racist). Noemí quickly learns this is a very different life and family than she’s used to, but she’s a strong, independent woman who’s used to getting her way, so she adapts. She finds the house, High Place, in quite a dilapidated state and very secluded from the village. She also learns she’s quite on her own with her mission, which is going to be much more challenging than she originally thought. “Noemí, you’ll do quite well on your own.” Wrong book, I know, but I wanted to speak the phrase into her soul so often because, oh readers, she needed it as she kept working towards her goal and finding new wells of strength and determination!

I want to say more, but also I don’t. Moreno-Garcia is a talented writer, and she paints a gorgeous picture, unrolling the story slowly with lush descriptions of the house, the scenery, and the characters. The Doyles are an eccentric family and they are perfectly introduced in the text, so I won’t try here. As you know I have feelings about endings, I finished and texted Ashley, who had not finished yet, “Dayum!!!!! Needs more EPILOGUE.” To which she replied, “you always say that.” Yes, yes I do, and that doesn’t make it not true, but it does make it not a spoiler. While I wanted a few more chapters, I also appreciate where the story leaves us. We know what went down, and we know what happened to our characters. Is there room for an epilogue or even a novella? Yes. Could there potentially be a sequel? I can see it, but I don’t think I’d like where it went. Do I think any of this is remotely realistic? Absolutely not. You know what is realistic and already happened? Moreno-Garcia’s backlist is on my TBR. Lucky for me, Gods of Jade and Shadow is already on my holds list!

In closing, I’ve heard some readers complain of this book being slow. It’s not slow, it’s quiet. It’s got an intricate story to tell and it takes some time to start weaving the tale because the set up is complex. But also, let’s get some perspective, it’s only 300 pages! By the time I hit 200 pages, I was being very careful about when I picked it up because I knew we had only had so many pages until the end and I wanted to savor every. last. bit. (I was also terrified of hitting a point of not stopping until I finished, like Alix Harrow (author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January – another potential favorite for 2020) gave it five stars on Goodreads after having an inappropriate lack of respect for tomorrow). If I didn’t already own two copies of this book, I’d be looking to buy one based on that alone!

What book has surprised you in glorious ways?

~Nikki

I need to make several confessions. I finished reading Mexican Gothic at 11:30pm the day before our post was scheduled to be put out in the world. And now here I am immediately after trying to get some thoughts on paper when I normally take a couple days to percolate my words. It’s a brave new world when I admit that this horror novel is vying for best book of 2020 – and I am regretting that I was unable to change my GoodReads Choice Awards pick in the Horror category to this title from The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires [Nikki here: Cosign, and I was 60% before the Goodreads deadline, so I changed mine to Mexican Gothic because I loved it more.]. My third confession is not a surprise to those who know me, but I am highly allergic to mold and fungi. This is relevant for when we start discussing Mexican Gothic in a little more detail.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia, accessed at www.silviamoreno-garcia.com, credit Martin Dee

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a “Mexican by birth and a Canadian by inclination” according to her author bio. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. I personally love that she has skipped recognizing the United States of America as a desirable place to live in North America. Her novel from earlier in 2020, Gods of Jade and Shadow, was the 2020 American Library Association Reading List winner in Fantasy AND won the 2020 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. She’s edited multiple anthologies including 2016’s Cthulhu’s Daughters and is the publisher of Innsmouth Free Press. Selfishly I wish she would stop editing other people’s works, writing articles for the Washington Post and book reviews for NPR and just write some more novels, but I feel like that’s terrible as she has multiple books scheduled for publishing in 2021, in addition to the backlist Nikki mentioned above. All of them, I want them all.

I like horror novels. At least I like the two I’ve read this year, but Mexican Gothic had me hooked from the moment Noemí Taboada stepped off the train from Mexico City and into the antique automobile of Francis Doyle and up the mountain to High Place to nurse her cousin back to health. Noemí describes High Place as a once grand manor that has fallen into, if not disrepair, at least neglect. Mildew smells, moldy books, and a fungi covered cemetery are literally the stuff of my nightmares. My breath strains in asthmatic sympathy and my skin prickles with phantom hives – both my reactions to mold and mushrooms. I could not have been the family emissary to my cousin at her husband’s ancestral home if this was what I would have been going into as I would have asphyxiated in my sleep. And then, on top of my allergies to the mold and fungi, it was the 1950’s and the main antibiotic for infections was penicillin – another allergen of mine! Dead. I would have been dead – or at least closer to death than my sick cousin. Adam constantly mentions, every time I have to bring up my mushroom allergy, which is often at restaurants, that all mushrooms are edible, just some only once. My issue is that all mushrooms are the one and done kind for me. 🙁

Regardless of the plethora of deadly allergens for me that are splattered about this book, the prose is so understated that it didn’t feel like I was reading about something inherently disgusting, smelly, and visually unappealing. Moldy, peeling wallpaper is not a Realtor’s ideal situation for a house. But, the love of family and a woman’s ability to ‘get the job done’ is why this book is as of now in my top 10 books of 2020. And also the descriptions of 1950’s fashion. I’m.Here.For.It.All.

What story has made you cringe, possibly gag, or break out into sympathetic hives, and yet sucked you in so that you had no respect for tomorrow?

~Ashley

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