Críticas Magazine

Adriana V. Lopez

Like a good ghost story? I certianly do. And I've been hearing buzz about a creepy debut novel forthcoming from William Morrow in October. Leopoldo Gout, a Mexican-American who also illustrated his own book, likes to work in film animation by day but seems to have a knack for writing creepy border ghost stories by night. I first got word about the book from his mother, the Mexican writer, Andrea Valeria (Un poco mas de amor, Planeta, 2003), then some fellow book crtiic friends have read the galley and loved it. I'm hoping to get my press copy soon, please, okay? I just love a good ghost story---Mexican style.




And here's a thumbs up from Kirkus:

GHOST RADIO
by Leopoldo Gout.

Illus. by the author

The host of a ghost-themed talk show finds himself inside the stories

of his callers and sinking into memories of his own disastrous past in

a first novel that moves with deserved confidence into Stephen King

territory.

Artfully drawing on the raucous cultures of North America's two most

populous nations, Gout weaves time and viewpoints and his own spectral

illustrations into a swift, sophisticated take on what may or may not

be madness and may or may not be death. Two cars collide on a highway

outside Houston. The survivors are teenaged boys, one from each of the

vehicles. Gabriel and Joaquin, both from Anglo-Mexican families, bond

with each other during their long recovery in the hospital, eventually

pairing as Deathmuertoz, a rock duo that finds favor with Goths (among

others).

A terrible event in an abandoned Mexican radio station leaves

the surviving Joaquin without a musical partner and with no ambition

to rebuild. He stays in Mexico, where he drifts into broadcasting and

evolves into the host of "Ghost Radio," a nighttime call-in program on

which people share their personal tales of the supernatural. When he

takes up with Goth beauty Alondra, a serious student of comic books,

she moves reluctantly into his professional life as the program's

resident voice of reason. Such a voice becomes ever more necessary as

Joaquin becomes so susceptible that he finds himself actually slipping

into some of the stories as they are told. The show becomes so popular

that it moves to the United States, and Joaquin's supernatural

experiences begin to intrude off the air. It turns out that his dead

partner Gabriel has news for Joaquin from the Other Side—none of it

good.

Palpable, almost visible cross-cultural creepiness that never lets up:

very smart thrills (Kirkus Review).