Mexican Gothic is creepy crawly good. The story creeps along hiding in the shadows, possessing its victims. The ghost (haze) revealed itself as something that was all around them and seemingly inescapable. Moreno-Garcia vanquishes the demons of patriarchy personified here as the mushrooms. Mexican mythology, romance, historical fiction, and of course gothic. One line read,
“Fungi can enter into symbiotic relationships with host plants… Well, it turns out that it can also have a symbiotic relationship with humans.”
That’s when I learned about mushrooms that were capable of mind control–well, for an insect (specific one here). I learned even more about the magic of mushrooms in the documentary, Fantastic Fungi, that illustrates the invisible power of the “flowers” of mycelium.