“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.” — Summary from Amazon.
This is an incredibly beautiful debut novel full of tenderness, love, grief, grit and blood. Both a celebration of life and mourning the lost, it balances the highest highs and the lowest lows of life.
To me, Monstrilio is the personification of grief. It’s hungry and demands to be fed a hearty serving of memories and tears. In the end section where M is the narrator, he speaks to Santiago about the memories that linger from when Santiago was alive – memories he refers to as stolen because, no matter how much Magos tries to convince herself and M and everyone around her that M is Santiago, he knows he is not, never was, and never will be. Every memory and trait M has that is in sync with Santiago feels inauthentic or stolen. He craves the days in which he was allowed to be wild. Magos liked his wildness at first but then tried to tame it, tried to mold it into the tender boy she remembered. It’s dangerous when you begin to romanticize and/or nurture grief in such a way because you often rewrite your own memories to be more grand, more tender, more beautiful. This not only hinders the healing process but also erases the truth of the past until you lose the things that mattered the most. The longer you hold onto this grief disguised as the person or thing or feeling you lost, the more chaos and destruction it will eventually bring into your moments of happiness, into your moments of healing.
*** Spoilers ahead ***
I want to touch on the ending here and talk about what it meant to me.
M slowly begins to drop his Santiago act and become Monstrilio again. He ends up saying goodbye to his family, stepping into the woods, and fully giving in to his monstrous side while his loved ones stay behind together.
To me, this signifies that they were all finally able to let Santiago go. They accepted the true differences between Santiago and M, therefore acknowledging the real loss of Santiago. They also each built a new life for themselves in which they didn’t really need to cling to M (aka grief) anymore. After this realization, they untamed their grief and let it return to the wild where it belongs.
There’s plenty of stories and novels out there that are metaphors for the grieving process, but this one is so unique and could be interpreted in many different ways depending on how grief has played a part in your life personally. I’ve felt the endless hunger that grief can be, so the hunger that M struggles with as he tries to be human connected me to him.
I truly believe this book is one that will be named when someone asks what books have changed your life and/or given you a whole new perspective. It’s such an immersive, beautiful, and endearing tale. Open your heart and let it in. I don’t see how anyone could deny feeling a connection to this story and every character in it once they’ve finished it. This story is too beautiful to ignore.
For All Story Lovers! 