In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s novel Monstrilio is a surreal and haunting debut, a book I could not put down that exquisitely explores themes of love and grief.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“In this wicked debut novel, Sámano Córdova combines queer themes touching on identity, kink, and consent with Latin American mysticism for an unusually visceral coming-of-age tale . . . There’s no doubt there’s nothing quite like it. A Promethean fable about reconstruction, reinvention, and the occasional human-sized snack.”
In his own words, here is Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s Book Notes music playlist for his debut novel Monstrilio:
Along with a dog named Lola, I wrote Monstrilio listening to music. There were songs that took me to the places I needed to be: Upstate New York, Mexico City, Brooklyn and Berlin. Others dug into feelings shouting to be explored: loneliness, chaotic giddiness, carefree monstrousness. Others jerked me away, whisked against some horror I’d just written, spitting me out at the other end, harrowed but satisfyingly alive.
Monstrilio starts in terrible grief and, gnawing and chewing along, it crawls toward reconstruction. This is a family and their little monster’s journey into a world that doesn’t want him, not as he truly is. I hope this playlist takes you into a journey too, not the same one, one that’s your own, but infused, hopefully, by Monstrilio’s notes and flavors.
- Max Richter, “Departure (Home)”
The Leftovers (HBO’s show in which 2% of the world’s population, poof, disappears) is arguably the best meditation on grief in a TV show out there. The show doesn’t dwell on the mystery of the disappearance, but rather explores what the people left behind make of it. How—and if—they are able to pick up the pieces. Max Richter composed most of the music for the show, administering in a few piano strokes the unassuming cruelty of grief. In Monstrilio’s first chapter, Magos, having just lost her son, Santiago, takes a piece of his lung to keep. I can’t think of better music to accompany Magos, and drop us into Monstrilio’sworld.
- Ely Guerra, “Colmena”
Magos is going back to Mexico after Santiago’s death, leaving her husband, Joseph, alone in Upstate New York. Ely Guerra’s voice immediately transports me to Mexico. This song in particular, with its background alien wails, puts me in a mood of displacement, of pining for something gone. Her son’s death has thrown Magos out of her known life. Escaping to Mexico, she is only following grief’s momentum.
- Los Daniels with Natalia Lafourcade, “Quisiera Saber”
There’s a naughtiness to this song, insisting that you move to its slithery rhythm, power walk down the street, blow the world a kiss—or flip it the bird, your preference, the song accommodates both moods—and laugh. It’s the hope for something extraordinary. At this point, Magos is feeling naughty; she’s got nothing more to lose. Besides, she’s on the verge of something extraordinary (her little lung has fed), and, boy, will she get it.
- Gabriels, “Blame”
Continuing in a sultry mood, Gabriels’ “Blame” adds a dash of defiance. “Who’s going to catch me when I fall down,” Jacob Lusk sings. No one, probably. The question is, should anyone care? Magos is in turmoil; her monster is attacking left and right. Does (or should) she care? “I’m lost,” Lusk repeats again and again. “I’m lost. I’m lost.” Magos may soon be lost. But if she is, should anyone care?
- Chavela Vargas, “No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá”
Chavela’s music epitomizes what I believe Lena is: pining (for her best-friend Magos), strong, wounded, funny, and eternally loving. Whenever I needed to embody Lena, I would listen to Chavela Vargas. I chose this one song because it captures Lena’s dilemma brilliantly: “No soy de aquí, ni soy de allá.” I’m not from here or there.
- Sigur Rós, “Varðeldur”
There’s a moment when Lena operates on Monstrilio, and he suffers a big transformation. If his pain and confusion spoke, I imagine this is what it would sound like. Otherworldly and beautifully heartbreaking. The song’s title translates to “campfire.” (Imagine sparks flying into the dark.) This is about Monstrilio’s hope, too, despite everything.
- Petula Clark, “Don’t Sleep in the Subway”
We come to a break. Time passes. It’s Joseph’s turn. Everyone has moved and gone on with their lives. This song is a wide-eyed innocent in a big city (imagine twirling), a hopeful newbie holding their dreams tight in fists. New loves are being forged. New cities are going to be explored. The song’s lyrics, meanwhile, are about forgiving and forgetting. “So why pretend you’ve somewhere else to go?” Joseph may have forgiven but try as he might—he’s created a whole new life for himself—he can’t forget. Also, I love Petula Clark and hungered for brightness at this point in the novel.
- Mo-Do, “Eins Zwei Polizei”
Bear with me for 5:13, and dance like you’re the coolest person in 1990’s Berlin. (While his father fights spiders, M dances in Berlin.) It’s the joyous, sexy, sweat-drenched eye of the hurricane.
- Terrenoire “Jusqu’à mon dernier souffle”
Magos weeps in a warehouse in front of an audience. This is both sincere and long-needed, and a literal performance. The plaintive piano strokes against the matter-of-fact singing renders a sense of the tumult that Magos’s performance in Berlin brings. The personal versus the public. The lost versus the present. The song’s title translates “Until my last breath” which is an unspoken mantra I suspect Magos carries almost all the way to the novel’s end.
- Chip Taylor & The New Ukrainians, “Fuck All the Perfect People”
This is Joseph’s song. He loves M desperately, but he can’t decide if he’s his son. He loves his family, but he can’t figure out if they’re still a family. He wants them all near; he wants the new and the old; he wants what he has and what he had. It is only in Berlin that he asserts himself, finally realizing that as fucked up as it all is, he wants it. This life. All of it.
- Bright Eyes, “Easy/Lucky/Free”
This is one of my favorite songs. Ever. Wistful, buoyant, and a little monsterly, this song, very much like M, produces in me a sense of tenderness paired with a desire to go out and not give a rat’s ass about anything. M is that contradiction. (Is it a contradiction?) It’s M’s hope that he will be easy, lucky and free. Plus, the way the song breaks at the end is a perfect omen for what comes next.
- Gogol Bordello, “Not A Crime”
Fun, loud, and chaotic, I can’t think of a better soundtrack for M’s ‘escapades.’
- Max Richter, “Vladimir’s Blues”
We come to the end, and back to Max Richter. This will be a brief exit. Less grief, more hope, like a lost baby crab walking out of the sand and meeting the sea for the first time.
- Kid Kopphausen, Gisbert zu Knyphausen & Nils Koppruch, “Das Leichteste der Welt”
[Bonus track!] This is the song that plays as the credits roll. The song that your soul takes with it as you leave Monstrilio’s world. “Das leichteste der Welt” means “the lightest in the world.” I wish that for M.
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.