The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Published by Del Rey
Publication date: August 6, 2024
Genres: Fiction, Historical
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The Hollywood studio system reached its zenith in the 1950s. Young women and men were discovered, groomed, coached, and molded into some of the movie industry’s biggest stars. Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s new novel, The Seventh Veil of Salome uses the original Biblical tale as the underpinnings beneath the making of a big-budget picture based on Salome’s story to dramatic effect.
Salome is well-known—beautiful princess performs erotic dance for her stepfather, Herod and then at the insistence of her mother demands the head of John the Baptist as payment. It’s been portrayed in art and entertainment numerous times as well as being used as a cautionary tale about the deviousness of women and the danger in making promises to them. In The Seventh Veil an undiscovered 21-year-old Mexican actress is chosen to portray Salome in a movie while a more seasoned product of the studio system is overlooked. All three young women are forced into roles they don’t want to inhabit with disastrous results.
As someone who read Moreno-Garcia’s novel, Mexican Gothic, I expected The Seventh Veil to have an element of horror or at least a macabre darkness about it. Surely, Nancy, the Hollywood veteran with limited talent, would use some kind of dark magic against Vera, her perceived rival. And Salome? No need to search for extremes there—a woman so assured of her sexual power she uses it to have a holy man killed just because she can. Except, maybe there’s more there.
Instead, rather than anything supernatural, The Seventh Veil relies on the classic Hollywood belief that more-is-more to craft the fates of Vera and Nancy while flipping the script on Salome’s motivations. If you’re expecting horror, you won’t find it here, but the drama is definitely entertaining.
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