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��One believes the stupidest things in grief,�� Gerardo Sámano Córdova writes in his debut novel, the literary horror Monstrilio. There are few griefs more shattering than the death of a child and one might do the strangest things in grief to try and recover that loss, often with more sadness to follow. Take for instance, the Irish revolutionary and long time love interest of poet W.B. Yeats, who reunited with the father of her deceased son and had sex on his coffin thinking it would bring him back (and the sadness that the conceived child, , was never considered her daughter after and left out of Maud’s will). Or look how this sort of grief arrives in fiction, such as Pet Sematary by King or even the reincarnation of dead body parts in Frankenstein. Not unlike the latter, Monstrilio involves life being created from dead organs—a lung in this case—and the subsequent struggles of parenting this creation. Luckily for Monstrilio, or M as he is later called, he is loved despite his ravenous appetite for flesh (working his way up from cats to whole humans over the course of the novel), and over the four perspectives in the novel Córdova explores ideas of family, both found family and blood lineage. A slow burn of a novel offering an excellent blend of horror, folktale and examinations of queer identities, Monstrilio confronts ideas of grief, family, sexuality and, ultimately, that we cannot hide our true selves.

��This thing—an actual fucking monster—was loved.��

For a horror novel, the tone in Monstrilio tends towards tender affection as the story spirals away from a shocking opening scene when Magos cuts open her dead son and removes his only lung. Born with only one lung, Santiago was not expected to live but made it 11 years before his death. Returning home to Mexico City, she hears an urban legend of a woman feeding the heart of a dead girl until it grew up into a beautiful man and undertakes a similar experiment. Amidst the grief of the deceased, Monstrilio is born and, despite some initial shock and fear, those around him decide to love him no matter what. Like a shockwave from the blast occurring in a particularly tragic scene of grief, the story is pulled from Mago’s perspective into 3 subsequent perspectives over the years: Lena, the best friend; Joseph, the ex-husband and father; and finally Monstrilio himself. It is a stylistic choice that (mostly) works and allows us to see how these events radiate outward across many lives.

��They are happy to believe I forget how they maimed me.��

Grief is shown as arriving in many forms. For Mago, there is magical thinking (which turns out to actually work) and action, whereas for Joseph he seems to struggle with his own inability to grieve how he, or Mago, feels he should. Which brings tension between them.

��I wanted him to snap, to finally and absolutely lose it. To break. He was withering. To wither is not the same as to break; to break is to have pieces to put back together, and to wither is to dry up, to wilt, to lose bone, to die, and death is the most boring.��

But we also see how it affects those around us, such as Lena who allows her judgement to be clouded by the wills of others and performs a surgery that will alter Monstrilio forever. M’s perspective being saved for last is not just because it is the best section of the novel and wraps up all the disparate elements into a tight punch of a finale, but because M’s feeling and needs are constantly being pushed aside to fit the ideas of what the other character’s think they need (this is most evident in the surgery aspect). This makes for an excellent look at the way the push and pull of families affects everyone, especially the younger ones caught up in it, and is made more ominous and chilling through the lens of horror.

��Hunger can be magnificent.��

Which also nudges the theme of the body that is always present in the text. On one hand we have the fact that M is quite literally a monster created out of a dead child’s lung, yet despite his form he is no less a part of the family or loved like a child. But in later portions of the novel he transforms into a human form which helps him disguise who he is inside. And what he hungers for cannot be hidden. Hunger is a quite a dynamic symbol here, being both his literal hunger but also as an investigation into sexuality. The majority of the primary characters are queer, with Joseph marrying Paul after his divorce from Mago which is perhaps a hidden “hunger�� that he was finally able to reveal, but it does all sort of touch on the idea that queer sexuality is often othered or seen as unnatural despite being very normal and natural, especially to the person having those emotions. Which parallels M’s feelings about hunger, and in the latter half of the novel we see how hiding oneself for the benefit of “polite society�� and whatnot doesn’t mean you don’t still feel this way. Trying to pass myself off as totally straight was awful and I could take the teasing for like things that were socially-coded as for women (I will not apologize for my vast love of Beyonce or the color pink) but to feel like I couldn’t just be like no I’m pansexual and nonbinary and that doesn’t change the me you know but I’d like to not have to feel I have to keep that hidden. Sure, being a horror novel where this is quite literally a flesh-eating monster muddies the waters here but you get the point. The parallel of M eating flesh and Mago being a performance artist that eats the written word is quite charming as well, if a bit on the nose.

I do love how this fits in with a lot of the more literary horror of BIPOC and queer voices such as Stephen Graham Jones, Carmen Maria Machado or Alison Rumfitt (to name just a few) that are using the genre in subversive ways to really discuss themes of identity and expanding the genre to the folklore of other cultures. I think there is a lot going on in this book that is really great, however at times it felt in some ways far longer than it needed to be (this would absolutely destroy me if it was a crisp novella) but then the individual sections almost felt undercooked. At times it seemed like two books being blended into one and the cracks show on occasion. And while I like a direct prose, there were times this felt like pulling the story forward along a screenplay where it’s assumed the emotion will be infused later by the actors instead of actually injecting emotion into the scenes. Not that this was devoid of emotion—there is a particularly amazing scene at the beginning of crushing grief juxtaposed with a rather slapstick-seeming struggle beforehand that made me think YES, Gerardo Sámano Córdova can really bring it!—but the novel is perhaps too up close to the details and loses its own context, like a photo of a face so close up that the overall impression of the face gets lost. That said, I’m over-emphasizing here to try and pin down what sort of felt like an itch distracting me the whole time and for a debut this is still quite good. But I know he can tighten it up and I will definitely be back for his next book.

Monstrilio is an impressive literary horror that takes us around the world and deep into family dynamics. Gerardo Sámano Córdova certainly has something special here and I love the infusion of Mexican folkhorror with this rather tender examination of family and grief. Admittedly the individual sections are a mixed bag, but it all pulls together at the end for a rather memorable, shocking and moving experience.

4/5