Book Review: Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

This post features affiliate links, which means that we’ll earn
a small commission if you make a purchase through these links.

“She wants to learn one last secret from her son. What part of a person’s body is inextricably themselves? Not hair, though many people keep lockets of hair. Hair is too public and not a secret. His finger or his toe, these she knows well, how thin and long his fingers are, like her husband’s, and how small and pudgy his toes, like hers. His tongue quick and lispy. His heart, a quiet, solitary heart engaged to her and her husband.

“It has to be his lung. Her son, Santiago, has only one lung. This is it, this lung, the core of his Santiagoness. She loves and hates this lung, a mystery to her, a tiny lung that carried her son way past his expected life span. She wants to thank it, and also spit on it for not having carried him further. Mainly, she wants to see the lung and hold it.”

📚

Monstrilio is a debut literary horror novel that opens with the death of Santiago Jansen de la Mora, son of Joseph and Magos de la Mora. A sensitive and creative child born with only one faulty lung, Santiago outlives his projected lifespan by the tender age of 11. Unable to fathom letting her son go, Magos cuts out a piece of Santiago’s lung, which she keeps in a jar as she flees to upstate New York for her decaying childhood estate in Mexico City, where her mother still lives.

Told via four alternating points of view spanning time and the globe, this strange and layered novel opens with Magos as she navigates her maternal grief, deals with the resultant marital issues, and places her faith in an old folktale, feeding the lung and growing it into a carnivorous, sentient monster, whom she names Monstrilio (later just “M”). The narrative chronicles M’s growth from tiny monster into almost man as it moves to Magos’s friend Lena, to Joseph, and finally to M himself. As he grows to resemble Santiago, M’s extended family of caregivers attempts to curb his dangerous natural impulses, which threaten his life and the lives of others. They love him unconditionally throughout his life and the many physical forms he cycles through, protecting him with a fierce loyalty and acceptance that knows no bounds.

This book is a beautiful, moving, emotional, horrifying, gruesome, and at times nauseating exploration of and reflection on grief, loyalty, love, monstrousness, and humanity. From the moment I picked it up, I couldn’t stop reading, and I devoured all but 25 pages in a single sitting. An intense sense of tension and disquiet was present throughout, and I loved the many forms and cycles this book presented and explored: physical and emotional, romantic and relationship, life and death, grief and coping, devotion and acceptance, and more. A moving and thought-provoking homage to maternal devotion and the power of love and family, Monstrilio grabs the reader by the heart and never lets go.

❤Amanda

Disclaimer

Many books featured on this blog were purchased by us; however, we do accept publisher-, author-, and other source-provided copies (both advanced reader copies (ARCs) and finished copies) from publishers, authors, and other sources we deem to be a good fit for our reading preferences and blog. Posts and reviews that feature such copies are disclosed. For more information, refer to the Disclaimer & Disclosures section.

Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links, which means that when you click one of those links and make a purchase, we earn a small commission paid by the retailers, at no additional cost to you. These links will take you to books and other products that we like, trust, and believe will be beneficial to our readers. Affiliate programs use cookies to track visits in order to assign sale-related commissions; funds earned keep the Site up and running and allow us to continue to share reviews and other content. Thank you for your support!