I often lament that there isn't much horror fiction to experience made in the last 50-60 years that doesn't make a trope of demonizing non-white folks or putting women in danger. It's a disturbing trend but moreover it's lazy plotting and it makes me highly selective about what horror I engage with.
So Salsa Nocturna is brilliant for a lot of reasons - Older's writing is extraordinary in a really casual way, nothing that stands up and demands to be appreciated for superficial cleverness, but with all of these subtle touches that really sneak in. (Can I say I'm really looking forward to re-reading this book for this very reason, too!) The dialogue and settings both stand out because they feel right - Older's twitter feed demonstrates how much he pays attention to the city he lives in (NYC), and so many of those details of place and conversation are present in this book, brilliantly observed but not forced in how they are conveyed. There are only so many ghost stories in the history of humanity but there are fresh twists on a lot of them here, especially in the stories helmed by one of two recurring characters - a half-dead detective, and an overweight, supernaturally-sensitive musician/composer. As a musician myself I especially appreciate how musical (and other non-visual) details filter into the writing, giving a real depth to some of the surreal images Older employs so well.
But aside from all of the strengths of the writing (which are numerous), what makes the book stand out is that it is truly intersectional. I get feelings from these stories like I did when I read Octavia Butler for the first time, the sense that horror isn't just synonymous with exploitation of people of color and women anymore. One of the scariest moments comes in an early story, where due to various circumstances a teenage Latino boy finds himself disappearing, in danger of dying without anyone knowing how or why. These are real fears of real black and brown Americans, and these stories are a whole other kind of ghost story in the American canon. By connecting to them, Older has created something really meaningful in his sketches of a haunted NYC, where characters acknowledge racism, gentrification, misogyny and other forms of oppression. Given that horror has made a history of using these things as mere plot devices, unexamined and often clumsily handled, I appreciate this immensely.
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Top reviews from other countries
Teresa
... a tweet about his book Shadowshaper which I thoroughly enjoyed and which was the reason I bought Salsa Nocturna
Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2015
Jessica Law
Groundbreaking, addictive and completely original - read this before the novels
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 13, 2016
