Odd Pages Book Club: Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova

In honor of spooky season, we are adding a dash of horror to our odd pages. Join us as we read and discuss Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova. (Just a little touch of Frankenstein.) MONDAY, OCTOBER 26TH 7 – 8 PM 5330 MECHACA RD, AUSTIN, TX 78745 BYOC (bring your own chair) Book club titles receive 10% off at checkout. This event is free to attend. You do not have to have finished the book to participate in the discussion, but we will be discussing spoilers. ABOUT THE BOOK 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. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City, where he currently resides. He holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan. He has studied with Alexander Chee at Bread Loaf as a work/study scholar, and with Garth Greenwell at Tin House. His work has appeared in Ninth Letter, Passages North, and Chicago Quarterly Review, and is forthcoming in The Common.