Halloween is around the corner and I have been celebrating spooky books on Instagram all this month. Today, I bring you the discuss of the latest book Ariel and I dived into: Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova. This was a great horror to discuss!
Monstrilio
By Gerardo Sámano Córdova | Goodreads
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.
Content notes include child death, animal death, gore, graphic body horror, blood, sexual content, medical content, grief, death of parent, cannibalism-ish
Monstrilio – Discussion
Kriti: A literary horror similar to Our Share of the Night (Goodreads, review), Monstrilio has the vibes of Frankenstein and The Children of the Hill (Goodreads, review). After losing her son, Magos takes a piece of his lung that evolves into a new being. I found this to be a slow burn book even though things were moving. It truly picked up about 70% for me when the story started being told from M’s perspective. The ending was worth the ride.
Ariel: Yes much of the book is a slower exploration of grief from different perspectives, but while the pace was slow the overall character arcs wrapped up fairly quickly.
This book was a bit too sexual and cannibalistic for me. I do not enjoy this kind of horror and the part where people want to be eaten is too much. I understand that these are key to this story but they truly dampened my experience of this book. I will try my best to get past this below and be fair in the other things that this book offered.
I totally agree– this book was gross and brutal. It was a lot. Like you said there’s a point to it and it’s intentional, but it definitely doesn’t take away from how repulsive the horror can be at points.
The story line around parenthood and how Magos and Joseph were different in their approach to parenting was well done. I liked that both sides were offered: we read Magos’ perspective as well as Joseph’s. Joseph’s wishful thinking around M hiding his true nature and integrating into the human world was portrayed well. His relationship with Peter was a good way to give him more depth. Magos’ grief for her child was endless and I liked how so many years since his death, she found a way to grieve for him openly.
Magos’ and Joseph’s perspectives were the most painful for me. Magos and Joseph each lost their son Santiago, but they gained a new one through M. Magos, up until the end, refused to see M as M, but rather tried to impress upon M her ideas of Santiago. Joseph had a different approach to his grief but made it very clear to M that his love and acceptance of M was only so long as M fit within his expectations of what a human should be. While we can sit with the discomfort of Magos and Joseph each existing in their immeasurable grief and pain, it was also difficult to see how M was hurt due to his parents’ lack of seeing things through M’s perspective while they were too caught up in their own grief.
M’s perspective is my favorite in this book. I liked learning his side of the story: what he thinks about his childhood, the boy whose lung created him and who he wants to be in the world. His parents may have succeeded in suppressing his wild nature and he tried to fit in but he also wants to be true to himself and finds ways to live freely. Lena and Uncle Luke’s roles in his life as surrogate parents were well done and I liked that M had them to turn to. They loved him in a way his parents did not and this extended family aspect of the book was enjoyable.
I agree. M’s point of view was really well done and the gradual escape from his parents’ expectations was gratifying and I loved the ending where he could be himself. Having Uncle Luke and Lena accept him for who he was allowed him to tread the path to becoming who he is.
The book also does a good job of revealing the monsters that we are as humans. The incident where M gets beat up by a guy was sad and horrific. Earlier in the book, M’s parents cutting off his tail for their own reasons was pretty bad too. The book exposes the ways in which we all take the role of monsters even if we don’t think we are one.
Yes! Like you said at the start, I definitely got Frankenstien vibes from this as well, and this is what I do enjoy about monster tales– how the “monster” in question can be anyone, not just the obvious not-quite-human character.
On an objective level, it was a good book. Subjectively and personally, I felt really distant from it and its events and grossed out on many parts.
If you are interested in literary horror and have enjoyed books like Our Share of Night, check out this one. Find it on Goodreads or your local library. If you have read this one, please add to our discussion by leaving a comment. 🙂
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