THE DARK VIRGIN
by Oakland Ross
HarperFlamingo, 523 pp.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, patron saint of Mexico, is The Dark Virgin of the first novel in a trilogy by Oakland Ross. An annual festival is held in her honour, with parades including fireworks, usually hand-held. Watching these casual pyrotechnics played out by adults among small children, there is an omnipresent sense of danger and anxiety.
All fiction needs to create similar feelings. Oakland Ross has an enviable writing record, having won the Roland Michener Award for meritorious journalism. As a researcher, he excels. However, historical fiction presents a major challenge. The ambience of a novel may be totally unfamiliar to the reader. A bridge has to be constructed into this arcane world. In this case, Ross he must quickly familiarize us with Aztec and Spanish culture, and draw us in. But he has difficulty letting go of interesting cultural minutiae and fails to keep the story moving along.
This uneven work of the demise of ancient Mexican civilization shows flashes of brilliance, but suffers sluggish passages. Here and there, Ross reveals a capacity to shock, as with "...the giant slobbering dogs bounded into the hurly-burly, howling like demons. They bowled over the Tlaxcalan warriors, ripped open their necks, and sucked out their blood, barking and yowling the whole time." But, taken as a whole, this novel has the feel of an overly long parade with only a few fireworks.
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