Happy December!
I only finished one book this month, I’m nearly halfway through Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid right now, because I want to read it before the mini-series comes out (hopefully sometime next year) and I enjoyed Malibu Rising and Evelyn Hugo so much. I don’t know why I do this, because I know that I am a fairly basic girl, I like things that other people like. Although, the reason why other people like the thing, why something becomes popular is because it’s good. But I tend to put off reading, watching, or listening to something that becomes super popular. Even though I know I’ll probably like it. I don’t get it.
Anyways, I only finished this book this month:
Velvet was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
This is a noir mystery set in Mexico City. It’s a bit, campier? telenovela-ier? than I would normally go for, but it was still a really fun plane read on my flight to Toronto this month.
It follows two seemingly disparate characters living in politically and socially tumultuous Mexico City of sometime in the vague 1970s. Maite, a self-identified plain girl with a boring job, a boring apartment, a boring closet, and no love life, but with an unusual breed of kleptomania; and Elvis, a gang member for a political enforcement gang who has bounced around from growing up poor to being the kept boy of a wealthy gringa writer to a cult member before this gang. On the surface these two people seem as if they would have anything in common, but they share an investigation, a love of gringo music, and an uncommon book.
Maite is unexpectedly asked to cat sit for a neighbor, not knowing that she will be pulled deep into the pro-democracy, socialist world of her neighbor, crossing paths with the clandestine government enforcement gang Elvis belongs to, a commune of artists, journalists, corrupt cops, and Russian spies.
Honestly, I found Maite to be very annoying at first, but I think we are supposed to. She’s such a sad sack, whining about her job, her love life, her lack of money and doing nothing to change anything about her life. Meanwhile, Elvis just seems lost. I also found to be very interesting, and such a learning moment to learn that the massacre that takes place in the beginning is based of a real event. The Halconazo or Corpus Christi Massacre of 1971 and the very real political turmoil happening at the time. I also loved a message I took away from the book, Maite is not politically involved or informed. She refuses to read the paper, but we all live in politics, whether we like it or not, and Maite is pulled into politics, into caring, with every page.
I wouldn’t say it’s a political thriller, but just like in real life, we are products of our worlds. Also, how gorgeous is the cover art??
What did you read in November?
Laura
Thoughtful Millennial 