Monstrilio
Ratings45
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings45
Average rating4.2
A "wholly unique" and "uncompromising" 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 (Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes) 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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This review is specifically for the audiobook narrated by Victoria Villarreal and Johnny Rey Diaz.
Narration 4.5/5
Story: 3/5
The narration was pleasant and generally free of overacting or other minor annoyances that sometimes occur in audiobooks, the narrators did a great job and it was obviously a quality production. That being said, I sometimes struggled to remember which character was speaking and it didn't help that I generally didn't care much for 3 out of 4 characters.
My main problem with reviewing this book is that it really wasn't what I expected, I came in expecting horror about grief and what I found was more along the lines of domestic fiction with horror elements and a lot of kink/sex.
The first part of the book was gripping and strong but then it sort of just lost momentum for me until the very end and while I get that “action” wasn't the point of this book I also didn't get too much about the grief and maybe it was just lost on me because of all the stuff about sex.
Ultimately, my conclusion about this book is that it's a good book that just really wasn't for me.
Many thanks to HighBridge Audio and Netgalley for the ALC.
Monstrilio is a story about the monster a mother creates after the death of her son, and how grief, loneliness, loss, and unconditional love can affect a family.
The story is told from the perspectives of four characters: the mother, the friend, the father, and M (the monster), all of whom are trying to move on and live their lives, but can never quite manage. It deals with human emotion, queerness, and misery in a poetic and gorgeous way, causing you to fall in love and empathize with even the cruelest characters in the book.
The book is horror, but it isn't scary, it's akin to the dark and disturbing themes in Perfume by Patrick Süskind (one of my all-time favorite books). He just wants to eat them all.
“What is he?” Uncle smiled, flipped to a new page, and wrote, INCREDIBLE.
