A review by pangnaolin
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

this was honestly an incredible novel. every character was deeply flawed & complex— understandable & lovable & frustrating (though i truly could not stand magos most of the time). i loved the casual queerness (which i wasn’t expecting largely because i got this as a gift and had no idea what i was getting myself into). it should be normal, but it doesn’t feel it. i can’t think of the last book i read where absolutely everyone was queer and the queerness itself wasn’t the focus of the story.

i will say that a lot of things are left sort of unfinished. magos in the beginning & magos later on feel like entirely different characters. on some levels, this makes sense for her; we get a sense in the first part of the book that she’s performing a lot of her behavior, so this difference could just be that coming to life. at the same time, it feels to me like something has shifted and i can’t tell what. also, at some point,

lena finds santiago’s cryptic journal where he draws monstrilio

and it’s completely left behind! obviously, we can draw some connections ourselves—

that monstrilio is who he is because he’s an embodiment of grief and deeply connected to santiago, and also an expression of suppressed desire of all kinds.

but even then, it feels lazy that this is how that was introduced, and then it was never brought back!

i found córdova’s style really interesting. obviously the book is surreal, but his style is sort of simple in a lot of ways— definitely influenced by the sort of bleak style of mexican literature, and yet somewhat americanized in a way that made me think “this guy could easily write a YA novel” as i read a gory description of someone getting cut open. i think it got better as the book went on, and this isn’t to say that his writing itself is bland or bad— i felt like i had really strong images of every location in the book and the characters were incredibly developed— but it did strike me so i wanted to note it! generally, his style felt much less surreal & weird than, say, carmen maria machado’s. i will say i really loved m’s distinct voice. his thinking & speaking was so different from everyone else’s, and really intrigued me!

regardless, i loved this book. it only took me a few days to get through despite being quite busy, and i loved every second of it! it wasn’t a hard read, but it was a really cool one, and i feel like i could analyze it forever. definitely would be a great book for an english class (minus the intense sex and gore at parts)