Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

Check out this insightful book review of “Monstrilio” by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, written by Natalie Wall. The review delves into the novel’s exploration of parental grief, bodily difference, and acceptance, offering a compelling analysis of its unique blend of horror and tenderness.

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

A grieving mother cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son’s lung under the dual influence of maternal instinct and folktale. She nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into a carnivorous yet affectionate being they call Monstrilio who they keep concealed within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate before he’s ready to emerge to the world. That is the premise of Córdova’s Monstrilio, a profoundly moving horror which traverses the depths of parental grief, bodily difference and acceptance.

Monstrilio is firmly a horror novel but its overall tone is one of tenderness punctuated with shocking moments of grief-tinged violence, such as the novel’s arresting opening scene in which a grief-stricken Magos cuts open her dead son and removes his lung as a keepsake. It’s a grisly scene and one that is met with horror and disgust from her husband Joseph but, for all the gore, it is a moment where grief leaps off the page: a monster itself that is channelled into the creation of Monstrilio.

“One believes the stupidest things in grief,” Córdova writes, and grief’s warping of perception runs throughout the novel. Monstrilio is told in four parts, each from the different perspective of Magos, Joseph, Lena (a family friend), and Monstrilio himself, called M, and this structure works well to illustrate how grief spreads across multiple lives, including M’s as he is painfully aware of the role he must try to play in his parents’ lives and the legacy of the child they lost. 

M brings the majority of the horror to the novel, whether it is in his infancy as a small squishy flesh ball with a rapacious appetite or as his distinctly human adult self as he attempts to balance an overwhelming hunger with his human role. M’s hunger here performs a double function as an exploration of his attempts to assimilate into humanity but also is an apt metaphor for his sexuality; something he is struggling to express alongside or separate from his carnivorous hunger. It’s something innate to him as well but troubling to society – Monstrilio brilliantly follows a pantheon of media which explores queer sexuality and desire through horror.

Córdova’s writing is a real highlight of Monstrilio

It’s precise and devastating but with brilliant control, never convoluted or overly metaphorical despite the subject matter. While the four perspectives of the novel may be frustrating for some (it can feel like they cut short at times – a testament to Córdova’s storytelling that we want more!) the way they take place in sequential order, forcing time to pass in significant jumps forwards and showing us M and his family in the multiple settings of Mexico City, New York and Berlin, works very well to illustrate the extent to which grief can persist in various forms over huge swathes of time.

Monstrilio is overall a brilliant novel and difficult to compare to any other. Although tonally very different fans of Melissa Broder’s satirical and sexual The Pisces may enjoy Córdova’s exploration of sadness, sexuality and the inhuman. For a more horror-esque comparison Julia Armfield’s Our Wives Under the Sea has elements of Monstrilio’s tender exploration of grief and the boundaries of the human and monstrous body.

Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

“Monstrilio inhabits an interstitial space among smart horror, folklore, literary fiction and the kind of weird, often multicultural narratives that usually get labelled magical realism for lack of a better term… Sámano Córdova has created an outstanding debut; for all the ground being broken in genre-bending horror, his is a distinctive, exciting new voice in fiction.” ― Los Angeles Times

“A Promethean fable about reconstruction, reinvention, and the occasional human-sized snack.” ― Kirkus Reviews

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 Mexico to Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.

“Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s dark, soulful magic puts me in mind of Kelly Link or Carmen Maria Machado (and further back, Mary Shelley). The horror of grief has rarely been so viscerally or movingly evoked.” ― Peter Ho Davis, author of A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself

“Haunting and often bleakly humorous, Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s Monstrilio is a captivating tone poem of trauma, grief, and transformation. Córdova writes with the lyrical precision of a master surrealist and creates an uncompromising vision of literary horror that is so wholly unique and utterly his own.” ― Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

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