Monstrilio

January 16, 2023
A monster takes the place of a dead child in Mexican writer Sámano Córdova’s sly and unsettling debut. Santiago, 11, dies from an unspecified illness while convalescing in Upstate New York. “Her son was alive, and now he isn’t. How dull,” the author writes of Magos, the mother, who feels robbed of a sense of drama: she’d previously imagined Santiago dying in her arms in a crowded mall as she became “a Pietá.” She keeps a piece of his lung in a jar as a memento mori, and when they return to Mexico City, the family’s housekeeper tells Magos a story about a woman who kept and fed a young child’s heart and another child grew in its place. Magos then spoons some broth into the jar, and by the following morning, the lung has begun growing. Magos keeps feeding the lung until it breaks out of the jar, then bites off part of her thumb. Eventually, the lung grows to be the size of a child, and Magos names him Monstrilio. Her husband gets Monstrilio a cat tower for him to perch on, though their creation proves less domesticated than they’d hoped. While the prose is a bit flat, Sámano Córdova does a good job elucidating the contours of grief and love. This creepy work of psychological horror gives readers plenty to chew on.

January 15, 2023
A mother despondent over the death of her son employs a bloody dose of magical realism to bring him back to life. In this wicked debut novel, S�mano C�rdova combines queer themes touching on identity, kink, and consent with Latin American mysticism for an unusually visceral coming-of-age tale. In New York, an 11-year-old Mexican boy named Santiago dies, leaving his mother, Magos, and father, Joseph, in terrible grief. Magos defiantly carves a piece of her son's lung from his body, returning with it to Mexico City. As in a folktale, Magos' guardianship of her bloody talisman breathes new life into it, resulting in a hungry rat-thing that eventually grows into a doppelg�nger for her son she names Monstrilio, or M, complete with fangs, claws, fur, and a mysterious vestigial limb. It's a true grotesquerie on the surface, although the body horrors and violent trespasses to come are primarily springboards to explore the inner lives of these characters--Magos; her best friend, Lena; Joseph; and finally young and ravenous M himself--and their transformations in the face of love and loss. Magos, resolutely determined to keep her monster alive, is enabled by Lena, one of Mexico's youngest surgeons, whose emotional blinders, medical ethics, and rationalizations blind her to M's true nature. Back in New York two years after his divorce, Joseph has found love with Peter, a financial analyst who believes M is merely Joe's son from an earlier marriage. As Joseph and Peter plan their wedding and Magos throws herself into a career as a celebrated performance artist, M is growing into a young man, complete with not only the turmoil and tension that coming-of-age brings, but a growing realization about his own ferocious, ravenous nature. As his sexual conquests and appetite evolve, self-realization turns to self-fulfillment. Deciding who to root for in this Kafkaesque myth may prove perplexing for readers, but there's no doubt there's nothing quite like it. A Promethean fable about reconstruction, reinvention, and the occasional human-sized snack.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

January 1, 2023
Grief takes the shape of a monster in S�mano C�rdova's disturbing yet touching literary horror debut. In it, a family struggles after the loss of a child and commits the unthinkable to keep his memory alive. Told from multiple perspectives in different countries and time lines, including Mexico City and Berlin, the novel focuses on the creation and evolution of a creature made to replace a little boy and pressured to fit a mold he can't comprehend. It also portrays parents' ability to overlook morality when blinded by love and devotion. Truly unsettling at times, the story often leans towards magical realism, depicting a reality where fantastical elements exist and tragic events become a palpable entity. In this universe, sentient and growing pieces of lung are as plausible as death itself. S�mano C�rdova creates complex characters who make difficult decisions that blur the lines between being human and being a monster. Fans of Eric LaRocca, Agustina Bazterrica, and Carmen Maria Machado will appreciate this unique take on the horror genre.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 1, 2023

DEBUT The novel opens just moments after a young couple has lost their only son Santiago, his small body folded between them in his tiny bed. In an act of grief or love or desperation, Magos, the boy's mother, carves out a piece of his lung, places it in a jar, and begins to feed it. This being a horror novel, of course, this doesn't go well, and eventually the hungers and desires and thingness of what results must be reckoned with. How Magos and her husband Joseph reckon with monstrilio provides the emotional thrust of the story, which is told from four perspectives across the urban landscapes of Brooklyn, Berlin, and Mexico City. C�rdova asks the reader to consider the limits of familial love and understanding. He provides no easy answers, and readers may find themselves touched and horrified in equal measure. VERDICT An enthralling debut that packs a heavy emotional punch. Fans of domestic horror like Zoje Stage's Baby Teeth or Ashley Audrain's The Push will find a lot to chew on here.--Colin Chappell

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.