#monstrilio

[annori]

Gerardo Sámano Córdova from Monstrilio (2023)

[ppebejef]

Creaturepetua has a crisis of his very nature…! Featuring lines from Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s wonderful and heartbreaking book Monstrilio :]

[kingbelugablep]

Monstrilio,The Summer Hikaru Died,and The Corruption Of Hollis Brown being the perfect "If a monster can be loved,maybe I can be loved too" stories.

[armandyke]

On my instagram I'm doing a monthly book highlight, where I share one of my all time favourites in the hopes more people will read them (and because they're kind of like required reading if you want to know River better). Anyway I thought it would be fun to share here too.

This month's book is Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova, which I have talked about at length on here already but will continue to do so until more people read it. I reread it for the second time a couple of months ago and it still hit just as hard.

My original review under the cut

This was another book that rewired my brain chemistry, and I really don’t know if it hit me the way it was intended to, but my god did it hit me.

The story is predominantly about grief. A mother cuts a chunk of lung from the body of her dead son, and ends up raising it until it eventually grows into a person… sort of. The creature (Monstrilio) is blood thirsty, wild, and always hungry, but with the help of her family and close friend, she is able to mold him into roughly the shape of her deceased son.

The book is split into four parts, each from a different perspective as we follow Monstrilio’s development. The first part is from the mother’s perspective as she removes her son’s lung and is able to give it a new kind of sentience. Then we follow her friend Lena’s perspective as the lung becomes sort of a wild animal that they have to domesticate. We follow some of Monstrilio’s adolescence through the perspective of his father, and then the final part is told from Monstrilio’s perspective.

As I said, the book is about grief, about the ways it impacts this family over the course of Monstrilio’s upbringing, and it would have easily been a 4 star read from me anyway. But my god. Monstrilio’s perspective at the end hit me where I fucking live. I won’t give anything away here, but if you’re someone who feels like they constantly have to put on a mask to hide some “monstrous” part of themselves, this book will punch you right in the gut. In a positive way. Sort of.

[allyourlife]

diversity win! the son that grew from the stolen lung of your dead child who you fear will not be able to defeat his animalistic urges is gay!

[bluesey-182]

this book is leaving me in shambles

magos:

joseph:

[martyrbat]

monstrilio – gerardo sámano córdova

[TEXT: Our son died before the dogwood pushed out its first flower, a bloom so simple with four white petals and a burst of yellow-green in the center—a beginner’s flower. I believed that flower was my son reincarnated. One believes the stupidest things in grief. I spoke to the flower and called it my son. And then I laughed because how ridiculous—how cruel, really—it would have been if my son was reincarnated as something so ephemeral, frail, and beautiful. I killed that first bloom with one swoop of my hand. Dead again, my son could become something else: the shell of a tortoise, strong and ancient, or a hideous fanged creature deep in the sea where he’d see wonders even he could’ve never imagined.]

[imaconnoisseurofroads]

Latest pick up from the library; one more time with this pattern, but in this colourful yarn; rode Line 5 for the first time to a Filipino bubble tea shop. 🍭