Carlos Fuentes, Aura

Carlos Fuentes' Aura is a strange gothic tale, a short novel of love, lust, and horror.  A young scholar, living in poverty, responds to a job ad that reads, he thinks, as if it were written for him.  An ancient widow, decaying in her old home, genuflecting before a wall of votives and devotional images, hires him to edit her husband's memoirs.  He comes purely for the cash, which he needs desperately, but is almost immediately distracted by the widow's beautiful, green-eyed niece.

The relationship between the old crone and young beauty is disturbing, and generates the force of the narrative.  Just how are they connected?  And what will this mean for the young scholar?

Written in the second person, "you" are the narrator, a uncommon conceit (also found in Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveller...) that draws the reader in, and toward the creepy conclusion.