Throughout the history of Gothic literature, rarely have characters as attractive and mysterious as Elinor Caskeycentral figure of the horrors that emerged in Perdido, the cursed town about which Michael McDowell He built his crowning work. Not in vain, “Blackwater” is a kind of great terrifying serial through which we witness several generations of the Caskeys, a family that the screenwriter of “Bitelchus”among other genre pirouettes, shows us the depths of his resentments, revenge and all kinds of poisoned feelings.
That in this Spanish edition McDowell’s desire to publish this novel in six installments has been respected serves as a major hook in a reading that, due to its very structure, always maintains tension, in addition to articulating a glorious catalog of narrative turns and appearances of characters that push forward a reading that, above all, preserves the canons of Gothic style in a sort of readaptation of rural plots in the best tradition of Mark Twain.
Perhaps this last reference is the most consistent stylistic anchor of “Blackwater”, from which McDowell also sees himself with enough vigor to portray the geographical cages of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. X-ray through which supernatural fiction becomes a devastating portrait of a micro universe to which we are dragged as if we were planted in the window of a house next to the Caskey homes. And the sadly ill-fated McDowell knew perfectly well the voyeur status of every reader dragged into the jaws of mystery. Neither more nor less than the rotor of a fluid succession of scenes orchestrated around this round of characters frozen in the wheel of time.
If we add to all this McDowell’s natural gift for drawing us into the secret of pure entertainment, few words can come to mind after reading these six volumes other than these two: incontestable classic.
