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A literary horror debut about a boy who transforms into a monster, a monster who tries to be a man, and the people who love him in every form he takes Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life. A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.
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3.75 stars
I didn't want to like it because the amount of TikTok ads I got for this book was absolutely absurd, but this was probably one of the better horror books I've read. I really liked the exploration of grief at the beginning of the book, but didn't expect it to span for such a long period of time. Initially I wasn't sure how it would work being a book so long (rather than a short story), but the choice to follow Monstrillio's story for many years seemed to work out well. I think I connected more with the first part, mainly because I enjoy books that explore grief and the beginning felt more unexpected. I actually enjoyed the multiple POVs because we get these different perspectives at different times, so we're not switching a lot during a short period of time.
Favorite quotes:
* what part of a person’s body is inextricably themselves? Not hair… hair is too public and not a secret… It has to be his lung
* Our son died before the dogwood pushed out its first flower… I believed that flower was my son reincarnated. One believes the stupidest things in grief.
* He asked me to cry with him, but his sadness was his and I couldn’t steal it.
* To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up, to wilt, to lose bone, to die, and death is the most boring. I needed to see pieces.
* “I know you think you’re alone. That your grief is only your own, that it is unfathomable to anyone but yourself. But you’re wrong, Magos.” I tried to find tears in my mother’s eyes, but none formed. As much as my mother annoyed me, she was most formidable. “Mi niña, this grief is ours. Mine, Joseph’s, even Jackie’s…Let us carry this with you.”
* “After Santiago, I expected to gnarl too. I wanted my grief, but instead I was left with a horrible nothingness, and I got really scared. But then I realized fear was a thing I could feel, and I clung to it. I was afraid of my loneliness. I was afraid I would never have anyone to love again. I blamed you for it. For leaving. I was angry. Furious. And then I had two emotions. Fear and anger. The anger helped me wake up in the mornings…even distracted me long enough that I would forget my loneliness…”
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