The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica | Horror Fiction Audiobook Review
This one wasn't meant for me.
My 2 Cents for Free!
This is a short book and I'm rather glad for that fact because I did not enjoy it very much. It takes place in a world ravaged by climate change and plagued by illness and religious zealots. This story focuses on a violent religious cult-like group that places women in different groups. Our main character is in "The Unworthy" group and they are kept in the dark about outside goings-on and forced to believe the earth is basically unhabitable for all forms of life. They all seem to dislike each other, but I suppose that's to be expected in this bleak world. It's all very unpleasant.
I don't know how to gently put this. This book bummed me out. I enjoyed Tender Is the Flesh but this one didn't hit the same. Terrible things occur and I'm not saying that to be all hyperbolic. If you need a content warning, let me know. This world is cruel but somehow, I felt absolutely nothing when I was finished except for anger towards a certain type of man and the women who enable their ilk and a whole lot of despair for the planet but I feel those feelings nearly every day by reading the news, I guess I don't want to be slammed with it in a book right now. It's written in such a way that I felt very distanced from the atrocities and feelings experienced by the victims. You're also thrown into the story and world with zero explanation and things slowly come together in the last 1/3. You'll probably have figured it out long before then though, but this method didn't work for me. I don't like being left so completely in the dark and it too often felt like a struggle to keep going.
I recommend reading Deerskin if you want to be emotionally destroyed in a way this book aims to do (but fails for me) but still maintains some hope for humanity in the end. Or read The Road if you want to feel some real post apocalypse pain. However, if you’re not yet sick of religious zealots who get off on torture this might be the book for you so ignore me.
Audio notes: the narration is excellent, the crossed-out journal entries (because this story is told from a notebook and the narrator is often interrupted and/or crosses out lines as she writes - a friend showed me the print pages where this happens before I started reading so it made more sense) are narrated in a slightly deeper tone. Keep this in mind if listening and it'll make things a little easier.
I don't know how to gently put this. This book bummed me out. I enjoyed Tender Is the Flesh but this one didn't hit the same. Terrible things occur and I'm not saying that to be all hyperbolic. If you need a content warning, let me know. This world is cruel but somehow, I felt absolutely nothing when I was finished except for anger towards a certain type of man and the women who enable their ilk and a whole lot of despair for the planet but I feel those feelings nearly every day by reading the news, I guess I don't want to be slammed with it in a book right now. It's written in such a way that I felt very distanced from the atrocities and feelings experienced by the victims. You're also thrown into the story and world with zero explanation and things slowly come together in the last 1/3. You'll probably have figured it out long before then though, but this method didn't work for me. I don't like being left so completely in the dark and it too often felt like a struggle to keep going.
I recommend reading Deerskin if you want to be emotionally destroyed in a way this book aims to do (but fails for me) but still maintains some hope for humanity in the end. Or read The Road if you want to feel some real post apocalypse pain. However, if you’re not yet sick of religious zealots who get off on torture this might be the book for you so ignore me.
Audio notes: the narration is excellent, the crossed-out journal entries (because this story is told from a notebook and the narrator is often interrupted and/or crosses out lines as she writes - a friend showed me the print pages where this happens before I started reading so it made more sense) are narrated in a slightly deeper tone. Keep this in mind if listening and it'll make things a little easier.
Final Rating: ⭐⭐
Publisher Plot Synopsis
The long-awaited new novel from the author of global sensation Tender Is the Flesh: a thrilling work of literary horror about a woman cloistered in a secretive, violent religious order, while outside the world has fallen into chaos.
From her cell in a mysterious convent, a woman writes the story of her life in whatever she can find—discarded ink, dirt, and even her own blood. A lower member of the Sacred Sisterhood, deemed an unworthy, she dreams of ascending to the ranks of the Enlightened at the center of the convent and of pleasing the foreboding Superior Sister. Outside, the world is plagued by catastrophe—cities are submerged underwater, electricity and the internet are nonexistent, and bands of survivors fight and forage in a cruel, barren landscape. Inside, the narrator is controlled, punished, but safe.
But when a stranger makes her way past the convent walls, joining the ranks of the unworthy, she forces the narrator to consider her long-buried past—and what she may be overlooking about the Enlightened. As the two women grow closer, the narrator is increasingly haunted by questions about her own past, the environmental future, and her present life inside the convent. How did she get to the Sacred Sisterhood? Why can’t she remember her life before? And what really happens when a woman is chosen as one of the Enlightened?
A searing, dystopian tale about climate crisis, ideological extremism, and the tidal pull of our most violent, exploitative instincts, this is another unforgettable novel from a master of feminist horror.
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