Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Jo Fletcher Books, 16 February 2023
Available as: HB, 282pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781529426328
Silvia Morena-Garcia is an impressively versatile author, ranging between genres (SFF, romance, thriller, horror) and themes and, in my experience, she never disappoints.
In Untamed Shore she gives us a noir-tinged thriller which evokes classic films of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Close your eyes and it isn't too much of a stretch to imagine this story taking place in black and white, acted out by the chiselled profiles and dangerous beauties of Golden Age Hollywood - even though it's set slightly later, in 1979. That dating is important as it gives Untamed Shore the ability to reference and build on this stock of imagery so that Viridiana, our protagonist (herself named for a film heroine) comments knowingly about actors, themes and atmosphere.
And indeed that's entirely fitting. Into Viridiana's provincial world, to the little town in Baja California where she spends her summer watching the dead sharks rot, dodging strutting boys and resisting her mother's plots to marry her off - into this world comes a trio of fascinating strangers, American tourists who've taken a house for the summer.
Introduced to them by her father's friend, 'the Dutchman' Reinier, Viridiana takes on the role of guide, translator and secretary to Ambrose, his wife Daisy, and her brother, Gregory. There's a certain implied louche glamour to the the three, a sense of a past, of money and, soon, of danger. Staying in their house, Viridiana is well placed first to pry out secrets - to overhear things but also to locate what's not being said - and then, after a death, to become involved in those secrets.
At the same time, Moreno-Garcia shows us a young woman growing up in this back of nowhere town, yearning for the bright lights of Paris, or of Mexico City where her father is. But don't fall into the trap of seeing the place or its people as unsophisticated or backward. That's the mistake that Ambrose, Daisy and Gregory make, as well as others who come arrive later, once the trouble starts. This book isn't written from the perspective of the strangers who come to town - strangers who don't even bother to speak the language - rather it's an affectionate and almost loving depiction of things (even if it is a warts-and-all depiction) from the inside.
What matters to Viridiana is her future - that life away from the town. She studies the impact on that future of all the undercurrents here, the swirls of gossip and reputation, the formalities represented by the Mayor or the local policeman. She understands - as the strangers don't - what can be managed, whether through an understanding of who is in what card game on a Friday night or from knowledge of who has interests where.
The book put me in mind, to a degree, of the typology of true crimes set out by the author George Orwell in his essay The Decline of the English Murder. Writing during the Second World War, Orwell lamented the displacement of the classic domestic murder (generally a middle aged husband ridding himself of his no longer wanted wife) beloved of the British Sunday papers, by a more public style of killing - and by younger killers, of both sexes, swimming in an atmosphere of drink, dance halls and flickering Hollywood. In actual fact the first type of killing remains with us of course - domestic violence doesn't go away so easily (as we see here) - but the second sort is and was incontestably more glamorous, if that's not a crass word to use, and Moreno-Garcia hits all the same notes here in telling a story that has femmes fatales, guns, hoodlums and duplicity in spades alongside a genuine streak of moral ambiguity.
I don't think there's anyone in this book who is altogether admirable, but nearly everyone is understandable - Moreno-Garcia gives us complex and real characters and to a degree you can sympathise with most of them (though I didn't take to Ambrose).
If you've read Moreno-Garcia's recent books, you will recognise some of the themes and settings here in Untamed Shore. Again we have a young woman growing up in a backwater who wishes to go places, a gloriously evocative portrayal of place and of being a certain age, watching an exciting world and fearing it will pass one by. While in others of this author's book these things come together via the supernatural, here it's a more prosaic, if also more criminal, route - it'll take every bit of Viridiana's determination to pull herself out of this mess - but there is a great sense here of her takes a chance in both hands when it comes. It's a wonderful read, and I'm glad to see this UK edition so that more readers can find there way to this story.
Strongly recommended.
For more about Untamed Shore, see the publisher's website here.
This seems up my alley. Great review!
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