‘House of Bone and Rain’ is Gabino Iglesias’s Star Turn

Gabino Iglesias should be a household literary name, and his newest novel, House of Bone and Rain, should make it happen.

Iglesias’ last book, The Devil Takes You Home, earned a slew of industry awards. In 2023, he became the first Latino author to win a Bram Stoker for best novel. He reviews horror books in a monthly New York Times column.

Do you think you don’t like horror? Keep reading. Yes, scary things happen in Iglesias’ books. But not all are supernatural.

Iglesias melds the horrors of real life with the things you can’t explain, all while exploring the relationships that fuel us. In House of Bone and Rain, it’s the bond between five young men, newly graduated from their high school in Puerto Rico.

Bimbo, Gabe, Tavo, Xavier and Paul share a history that renders them de facto brothers. “You know, like the tight-knit group of kids in a Stephen King novel, except with three brown dudes and two Black ones running around and getting in trouble,” Iglesias writes. (Worth noting that King himself has lauded Iglesias’s writing on X.)

When Bimbo’s mother is murdered outside a downtown club in the novel’s opening pages, the boys agree to help their friend avenge Maria’s death.

Iglesias skillfully sketches each of these young men, although Gabe is the heart and conscience of the book. He’s known tragedy, as we learn early on in a flashback to his father’s death. And while he may make questionable choices, he’s also an astute observer of the people around him and how they behave.

“You can fool yourself into thinking bad things will stay away if you don’t talk about them, and we were all experts in doing just that,” Gabe thinks as he listens to Bimbo unveil his revenge plan.

The hunt for Maria’s killers ferries readers through many worlds. There’s the drug syndicate that runs the beach town where much of the action happens,  the mix of English and untranslated Spanish that threads through the novel, with plenty of context clues for non-Spanish speakers, and there’s the rueful acceptance that when disaster strikes (cue Hurricane Maria), people are mostly on their own. And there are the beliefs that underpin characters’ lives, from the religious rituals that ground them to the tacit agreement that even if the group doesn’t agree with Bimbo’s plan, they’re going to help execute it.

But the worlds in House of Bone and Rain are not just part of these boys’ story. Most are also a window into a real world that exists, one that readers might not get to know without the fictional scaffolding of Bimbo’s revenge. Iglesias grew up in Puerto Rico, and started writing what eventually became House of Bone and Rain there.

The wreckage Gabe sees around him in the novel mirrors what happened during Hurricane Maria. It was the most devastating storm to hit Puerto Rico in more than 80 years, taking out power across the entire island, destroying some 80 percent of the crops and killing multitudes. It’s telling that the final death estimate remains in dispute.

So while it may be tempting to sidestep genre fiction, I hope you non-horror readers are still with me.

“Crime fiction and horror fiction, when done right, can be very political,” Iglesias noted recently in a thoughtful Esquire essay about his reception in France compared to the States. And in House of Bone and Rain, a refrain from Gabe’s abuela echoes throughout: “All stories are ghost stories.”

I don’t want to spoil the otherworldly elements in this masterful mix of a novel. Suffice to say that when they come, horrific events have already occurred, and you’re ready to accept that this is yet another hurdle the teens must navigate.

What will stick with you is this band of brothers. The tether between them stretches and splinters, but never disappears. They will rip out your heart and put it back together again.

(Mulholland, Aug. 6, 2024)