Queer Book Club: Monstrilio

Come discuss books and make new friends 🌈✨

!!! Please update your RSVP if you find out you cannot attend !!!

How the meeting works: While we are waiting for everyone to arrive, we have tea and get comfortable. Once most of the group is seated (please aim to arrive on time to help with this!) we go around introducing ourselves. From there we have a casual, loosely structured discussion that can go in whatever direction feels natural. Once we've talked about everything we want to related to the book we often hang out for a while later to chat about other things for anyone who wants to stay.

Back with our regularly scheduled autumn horror reading, this year's pick is Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova. We'll also give a try to meeting on a Friday. The book is available to purchase as physical, audio, and ebook, and to borrow at the Bibliotheek.

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.

Everyone is welcome who has read the book (or DNF, and is okay with spoilers) by the time of the meetup. The book club is hosted in English.

Hope to see you there! 🏳️‍🌈📚