There is something about Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s writing that just speaks to me. I haven’t read enough of her books to make definitive statements about her writing, but in the works I have read, it feels like she writes with one middle finger raised. It speaks to me. I don’t delude myself, as a white American whose ancestors definitely fucked around in places they should not have been, I am part of the group she is raising that middle finger at, and I am fine with it. Her writing is lush and her characters are rich and delightfully not entirely likable. And that undercurrent of self assured defiance gives even the most idyllic page a sharp edge.
I have not read H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, but the story is so woven into pop culture that I am not unfamiliar with the basic story. I suspect that Moreno-Garcia’s retelling surpasses the original. Wells called it “an exercise in youthful blasphemy.” The Daughter of Doctor Moreau is no youthful “what if…?” It’s thoughtful and deliberate. It sets the horrors of Doctor Moreau’s experiments into the political landscape of the Yucatán Peninsula in the 1870s – during the Caste War of Yucatán. (I went down so many history rabbit holes reading this).
The story is told in alternating point of view by Carlota Moreau, who we meet as a young teen, and Montgomery Laughton, an alcoholic Englishman, deeply in debt, seeking to hide from the world. Each of them, for their own reasons, accepts Doctor Moreau’s experiments and the hybrid creatures he creates with few questions. The house, Yaxaktun, is Carlota’s world and Montgomery’s refuge. As the peace at Yaxaktun unravels, Carlota and Montgomery begin to look more closely at everything they let slide past their notice. Carlota had been raised to be soft and quiet, a delicate flower to be protected and displayed. As she confronts the horror that is her father, she grows up fast.
She wished to be unafraid and for the world to be good. Neither thing seemed possible.
To Hernando Lizalde, Yaxaktun is a financial investment and he expects Doctor Moreau’s experiments to pay off. Moreau is playing god in the jungle and Lizalde is funding him because he wants cheap labor that won’t runaway, or rise up in rebellion. They are the monsters and the horror in this story, and we know it from page 1. The central story isn’t the revelation and downfall of these monsters, but Carlota’s growth from trying to be a good daughter to becoming her own person – from a butterfly decoratively pinned on a board to a person of agency.
The Daughter of Doctor Moreau starts off languid and the plot moves slowly at times. But Moreno-Garcia is always layering in the details so that when the action becomes explosive, we see the full horror that Moreau and Lizalde have wrought. I could spend weeks talking about this book and it wouldn’t be enough.
CW: Discussion of medical experiments, control with drugs, alcoholism, death of animals, violence, beatings, cruelty
I received this as an advance reader copy from NetGalley. My opinions are my own and freely given.