Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silver Nitrate is a novel about occultism and movies, as two friends face off the magic of a strange film. Montserrat is a sound editor in Mexico City in the 90s, fighting for shifts from people who disregard her as a woman, and spending time with her best friend Tristán, a faded soap actor. When Tristán meets aging cult horror director Abel Urueta, Monserrat and Tristán are drawn into the story of a Nazi occultist who made a film with Urueta using silver nitrate film to try and capture magic, and soon it seems that magic is back and threatening them.

Pretty different from Mexican Gothic but still imbued with objects and ideas holding magic and horror, this novel starts slowly, building up the world of the two protagonists and their relationship and struggles. The threat is a slow burn one, as they start to believe in magic and ghosts thanks to darkness following them, but by the end there’s dramatic action. Moreno-Garcia explores ideas both of the film world and of the Nazi obsession with the occult, and how magic might be used by people who believe in hierarchy and oppression of those not “worthy” by weaving it into real life fascism, and this gives the book an unsettling feel.

A real highlight of the book for me was the relationship between Montserrat and Tristán and the way their individual characters are built up, with their childhood friendship and Montserrat having been in love with Tristán for a long time but having always pushed it away. The details in the ways in which they care for each other whilst also knowing each other too well gave the book a rich sense of character, and the fact they were tied to each other was crucial to the narrative. I also liked the fact that both of them were bisexual and it was just another thing about them, explored slightly in Tristán’s case from the perspective of being a soap star who had to appear to be straight.

This is a slow burn book that creates a rich world of horror films, dark magic, and two outsiders drawn into something beyond their control. Maybe ironically it might make a good film, though hopefully not one with magic burnt into it.