Manuel Munoz

The Consequences: Stories was published in the UK in October 2022 by the small, but perfectly formed, Indigo Press. Extremely well reviewed in the US, Muñoz’s collection of short stories concerns Mexican American lives in southern California with their true families south of the border, or Mexicans crossing the border to find work in the US. This is a hard world; the circumstances are usually uncomfortable and the characters resilient, defensive, and put upon. The stories are on the harsh side but very real - California and the south west is certainly not all Palm Springs and Beverly Hills. Muñoz is the first in his family to attend university and he wears his Harvard education lightly with his writing, however the awards that the individual stories have collected along their journey into this admirable but gritty collection reveal a considerable talent.… (meer)

This is an unashamedly literary novel whose preoccupation is less with telling a story in all its constituent parts and more with creating atmosphere and examining themes to do with films in general and the film “Psycho” in particular. I’ve never seen Psycho, and maybe I would have got along better with this if I had, but that said I still found things to enjoy within this novel - the bit where one of the characters is stuck in a car in the motel car park is particularly tense, and if you read it like a series of loosely connected short stories then each one is pretty good. The author writes with tremendous skill and confidence, and I’m pretty sure if he set about writing a novel that started at the beginning and ended at the end and left in all the dramatic bits that this one left out I’d think it was great. But I suspect he’s not that kind of author.… (meer)

When a famous actor and director arrives in Bakersfield, California (1959) scouting film locations for an upcoming movie about madness, the local gossip columns begin to speculate why they are here. However, when a murder at a roadside motel is discovered, this dusty, quiet town is turned on its head. Unfolding the same way the Hitchcock’s movie Psycho, almost frame for frame. No one ever predicted that life would rival anything that this director could capture on the screen.

Manuel Muñoz has been dazzling the world with his short story collections for a while now, often been compared to Junot Díaz or Daniel Alarcón. What You See in the Dark is his debut novel and it explodes onto the scene to explore the deliciously sinister side of desire. Heavily influenced by Psycho, Muñoz tries to capture that iconic feel of this classic movie.

What I found fascinating about this novel is the way it did try to mimic Hitchcock’s Psycho, trying to capture the feel and style. While it does not always work I was very impressed with just how much did translate to the page. Manuel Muñoz is a very impressive writer and I went into this book expecting something light and fluffy but ended up being captivated by the style.

What You See in the Dark is a very stylistic novel that tried and often succeeded in playing with the imagery, however it often did stick to what novels do far better than movies, and that is the internal monologues. The book is not without its flaws, there are times where it tries too hard at mimicking Hitchcock and there are other times where it feels flat or dry. In the end, this was an enjoyable book with a perfect title. What do you see in the dark? Hitchcock knows and he has the answer.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2015/06/26/what-you-see-in-the-dark-by-manuel-mu...… (meer)