Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a mercurial author – unwilling to be bound by genre or time period or setting. In her career she has effortlessly moved from vampires to gothic to historical dramas. Her last book Silver Nitrate was an occult thriller set around a the movie industry in the 1960s. The Seventh Veil of Salome also centres around the movies but could not be more different in style and tone. But it keeps very strongly to character types and themes that underpin much of Moreno-Garcia’s work.
The Seventh Veil of Salome is set at the end of the golden age of Hollywood. The big stars are on the wane and a new sort of movie star, like James Dean, is rising. Sword-and-sandal epics are still big and so Pacific Pictures looks to make a version of the tale of Salome, daughter of Herod, and famous in literature at least for her dance of the seven veils and for calling for the head of John the Baptist. Into this world comes ingenue Vera Larios. Plucked from obscurity by a talent scout holidaying in Mexico, Vera is brought to Hollywood to play the lead. At the same time wannabe actress Nancy Hartley gets a bit part on the film that she feels should have been hers and sets her sights on Vera. Around the stories of these two women, Moreno-Garcia also tells her version of the story of Salome, a young woman struggling with her own desires and to break out of the role in which she has been cast.
As with her other historical novels (Velvet was the Night and The Untamed Shore), Moreno-Garcia effortlessly brings this time and place to life. The Hollywood of the 1950s runs on gossip and is full of entitled stars and struggling studio hands and starlets. This world is juxtaposed with the royal house of Herod in the time of Jesus and the political intrigues as various factions jostle for power. And of course, within this all, the particular challenges for the ex-patriot Mexican population living in Los Angeles at that time.
As with most of Moreno-Garcia’s work, the narrative is anchored by three strong, very different, complex female characters. Vera, struggling with imposter syndrome, finds love but struggles when her world becomes hostile. Nancy is a grifter with anger management issues who thinks the world owes her more and that she should be a star. And Salome herself who seeks to be more than a pawn in the political machinations going on around her. The foreshadowing, delivered in documentary style observations of the two leads, keys readers in early that Vera is heading for some sort of tragedy that involves Nancy. And using this, Moreno-Garcia builds to an unexpected climax, carefully paced against the equally tragic story of Salome.
The Seventh Veil of Salome is another great work of historical fiction from a writer who can seemingly deliver in any register. An atmospheric rendering of Los Angeles in the 1950s full of complex and interesting characters. And a resonant plot that finds echoes in two very different time periods. All centred around three richly imagined female characters all trying the manage with their own demons and dreams.
The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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