Customer Reviews

Monstruary

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An incredible assemblage of characters. A multitude of hints and hidden meanings. It seems to me that the author wants to show off his extensive knowledge of the arts and literature. In that way the book is a quiz about the reader's education, giving him an "aha" moment every time he recognizes one of the characters. And that is just about it - there is no story line to the book. The author is just playing around.

Spanish author Julián Ríos, of Loves that Bind and Poundemonium, brings us his latest piece of work, Monstruary, at the hands of translator Edith Grossman. Monstruary is a complex weave work that simultaneously confuses and elucidates.

Our lead character, Victor Mons, is a painter whose most recent collection is titled Monstruary: "a menagerie of personal demons summoned from the disturbing and often erotic images of his past." The reader travels sidecar to Mons' mind, as the painter sets out into the world to discover the muses for his palettes. Along the way we meet a multitude of different characters: beautiful models, fiendish figures, phantasms and prostitutes. Then there is the architect who is attempting to deconstruct a real city by constructing imaginary ones, and the anonymous patron who wishes to have his portrait painted upon the very skin of his mistress.

In Monstruary the reader is taken on a Technicolor trip by the create and skilled hand of Julián Ríos, creating a story that is quite unlike any other.

Originally published on October 8th 2001

Originally published in the Long Beach Union.

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