Emiliano MongeCritiques

This book made me cry, smile, laugh, and every emotion in between. The writing was beautiful. A story about a father who is determined to keep his children safe from anything fails to do so. Brilliantly captivating, the story was slow at first but the pace picked up so quickly!

Un hombre abre los ojos en su cama y se pregunta «Qué soñé que he despertado preguntándome quién soy». A partir de ese momento, el hombre se convertirá en un pasajero de su delirio, en un espectador de la tortura que le supone sobrevivir a su voluntad de estar vivo. El hombre vuelve una y otra vez sobre esta pregunta y, sin advertirlo, vacía el contenido de su memoria para explicárselo. Entre las miles de imágenes que pueblan su pensamiento, se advierte una tragedia. Se avizora el fuego. El fuego que funge como parábola de la existencia. Se pregunta el hombre «Qué si el fuego no despide ese calor que le imputamos, qué si sólo lo concentra, si lo toma de las cosas que atestiguan su expandirse», de la misma manera que él concentra la existencia de su hermano, de su ex mujer Claudia, de sus mascotas, de los objetos que habitan los espacios que lo encierran, y los funde en el interior de su memoria para tratar de encontrar algo en su entorno que le explique quién es y, sobre todo, por qué es.

I just couldn't get through the dialogue. I wanted to like the book since it spoke to themes close to my heart, but the narrative style wasn't readily available to me.

The author had an interesting story of a father who fakes his death to escape his life, as well as writing well with clever style. But I was overwhelmed by the heavy emotion that didn’t really let up and did not finish.

I find memoirs very difficult to review, and this one is no exception. It's hard to comment on the actual story being told, as the real experiences of the author and his family. I'll focus instead on the story-telling itself: I found the jumps around in both time and the changes in style abrupt and at times hard to follow. Every time I started to get my bearings on who was narrating, what was happening in relation to other sections, and got in the flow of the style again, that part of the book would end and I'd be tempted to put it down rather than continuing. In the end I'm glad I finished reading, but am unsure whether I can actually recommend the experience.

What Goes Unsaid is a well-written, evocative, fluid account of fathers and sons, tales and realities, here and not here, actual and fictional, truth and lies, remembered and forgotten, visible and invisible, present and not present, witnessed and imagined, cruel and loving, spoken and silent, freedom and bondage, life and death and rebirth.

Emiliano Monge (1978-) is an award-winning writer of novels, short stories and children’s books who is one of the most highly regarded Mexican and Latin American writers of our time. His latest book to be published in English translation focuses on the lives of his paternal grandfather, Carlos Monge McKey, his father, Carlos Monge Sánchez, all of whom share one major trait: each found a way to escape from his family to pursue his own needs and desires, and in doing so neglected their responsibilities as husbands, fathers, and sons.

The book opens with a quote from the front-page headline of a newspaper published in Culiacán, the capital of the Mexican state of Sinaloa, in 1962: “MONGE, DEPRAVED RASPUTIN!” The Monge in question is the author’s paternal grandfather, who disappeared four years earlier after staging his own death, leaving behind and severely disrupting the lives of his wife and four children, until he suddenly reappears four years without a hint of penitence, as if he had left to go to a corner store a few minutes earlier. Monge describes his grandfather’s scheme, then places it in context for what is to come:

But the scene that I have just sketched is not what matters. It is simply a list of events, And events are not the story. Even facts are not the whole story. The story is an invisible current in the depths that moves all things. The true story is why my grandfather sensed—instinctively, as an animal might—that he had to leave. Just as, many years later, my father would do the same. And how, in turn, my moment came.

The author returns to his home town to interview his father, a bitter man who is wracked with illness and frailty and seems much older than his apparent age would suggest. The fictionalized conversation between the two men consists only of the father’s dialogue, and the reader is left to fill in the son’s comments. The history of the Monge family is slowly revealed, akin to separating the layers of an onion, as the son extracts details about the life of his relatives, from his reluctant father. Other chapters consist of diaries kept by the maternal grandfather, and the author’s own story of his life, and those of his parents and brothers, told in the context of México over the past 75 years.

What Goes Unsaid was an interesting view into the lives of a remarkable but not unusual Mexican family, and the often difficult and fractured relationships that men of all backgrounds have with their families, and with each other.½

This is my second go around with Monge. The first Among the Lost was a little less subtle than What goes unsaid but both are about the tentacles that the Mexican drug cartels have into pretty nearly every level of Mexican society. The grandson Emiliano wants to know what’s going on within his own family….the disappearances and reappearances of his grandfather throughout his life….his father’s bitterness about his grandfather and his own disappearances and neglect of the family and backgrounding that the very sinister stability provided by his maternal uncle…..someone his mother always defers to over even her own husband.

It’s very interesting but it’s a book that a reader needs to take his/her time with because it can get confusing if you don’t read it carefully. Overall I liked it but not quite as much as The Arid Sky which had more elements of a crime thriller and a bit more action. Monge is a very good writer IMO but like a lot of writers though one book you like better than another.½

I too feel like the history keeper of family tales, so I appreciate Monge's efforts to capture the lived experiences of his father and grandfather. One of my favorite aspects was the inclusion of several cookie and drink refill breaks (because storytelling can take a lot out of a person!). I just mainly struggled with the flow of the novel, finding it hard to follow at times. I was also curious to know if the grandfather's journal entries were fictionalized or not.

What Goes Unsaid by Emiliano Monge is a "fictionalized memoir" that made me, in turns, frustrated and in awe. Ultimately, in examining his own familial history he makes the reader ask whatever question(s) may be central to their own.
The distinct differences between each generation's section of the book, in both format and voice/narration, makes each quite unique in the reader's mind. Perhaps Monge has elaborated on why he did this but for me it served to illustrate something about history. The further back we go we have only written texts with which to understand, and even the best attempts, even in diaries, contain some element of self-editing, of thinking/knowing that this will, at some point, be read by another. More recent history has the advantage of being interrogated, oral histories often being the result of interviews or some type of exchange between the now and the not-long-ago. Finally, trying to understand our now, to try to place it in context, is difficult and usually episodic. We are in the moment so we don't have the (dis?)advantage of hindsight. We can be brutally honest one moment, somewhat apologetic the next, and in denial the next. We may stumble on our answers, but how aware of it are we? Like they say, only time will tell.
I was easily carried along in each separate story as well as the larger story, which is really an inquiry. So as a memoir I feel it was successful. In particular the ways it interrogated masculinity, or more accurately how men perform their idea of masculinity.
What makes this a book that will stay with me has less to do with Monge's family history and more with what his questioning approach elicited from me. Most memoirs, even ones that intend to highlight some broader questions, are largely nostalgia through a lighter or darker lens. Those generally make me remember my life in a nostalgic manner, even the less appealing moments. But this intense questioning, this intense desire to answer questions, made me think about, and re-frame, moments in both my and my family's history.
While I highly recommend this memoir I would also warn a reader to keep in mind this is both a fictionalized account and far more thematic than a basic chronological telling.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via LibraryThing Early Reviewers.

Emiliano Monge’s compelling memoir about family, mental health, and identity, What Goes Unsaid, examines the impact of loss throughout several generations of men within his own family. Monge presents his, his father’s, and his grandfather’s lives in alternating chapters that each focus on one of the men. The structure is occasionally confusing, but Monge’s differing writing style and major plot-points for each generation allow his writing to flow clearly. Monge’s prose lays bare many of the underlying patterns of abandonment that have plagued his family for generations and the emotional trauma each abandonment (and the familial sum of all the previous abandonments) has on the family.
Though not a light read, this memoir offers spurts of humor and is interwoven with historical events in Mexico’s evolution.

This is a really unique memoir, told in various different tenses and narration styles which kept the story interesting. Although most of the people in this book were unlikable, Emiliano did an amazing job at telling their story from their own perspective.

In "What Goes Unsaid," Emiliano Monge gives the reader an intertwined story of three generations of men struggling to figure out who they are; a struggle that haunts each of them so deeply that each ends up using an extreme form of escaping in order to solve their problems. One man's story is heart-wrenching and will make your core ache with sadness; another man's story is deep and wise and full of witty-frustration gleaned from their honest reflection of life; and one man's story is erratic and leaves the reader hoping desperately that they find their truth because, unlike the other two stories, his is the only one that has no closure, because his story is still happening.

The author's writing style is unique and there are three, if not four, distinct writing styles throughout the book that challenge the reader to shift gears in order to understand what's going on. The author's use of multi-page run-on asides, and asides-within-asides, can also be frustrating when you find yourself having to turn back a page to remember how a sentence began. One of the most interesting things about the author's writing style is what goes unsaid in the book, specifically, his half of the conversations/interviews with his father. This unsaid half of entire conversations leaves the reader with cryptic moments where they need to fill in the blanks at times, something I found humorously ironic rather than frustrating. These stylistic notes do not deter me at all from highly recommending this book, though, because Monge's writing style and his story was so fascinating that when I finished it I immediately flipped to the beginning and read the entire book a second time (something I'm not sure I've ever done before, but it was worth it).

This book is a must read for anyone who has ever felt stuck in life - not because it'll give you answers, but because it'll help you to realize that you're not alone.

Epitafio and Estela are victims of human trafficking who now traffic humans themselves. The novel is fierce and scenes are shocking and yet what drives the novel even so are the human relationships. Monge makes it difficult to sympathize with his characters, but allows us to forgive them because it's clear they aren't inherently cruel; their poverty and their lack of real choices traps them in a nightmare world. The style here is vivid and cinematic and relentless, with the unbearable leavened at unexpected times with dark humor. A challenging book to love, but worth the challenge in every way.

There are times when I finish a book and wonder what the hell I just read---was it truly brilliant or merely crap adorned with random acts of brilliancy?

In the case of Among the Lost by Emiliano Monge, I can honestly say I'm not sure, but I liked it.

The stark narrative involves human trafficking and illegal immigration, a hot-button issue nowadays. Among the Lost does not go into the politics, rather it goes to the underbelly, the reality that mainstream media usually doesn't acknowledge. There are those wishing for a better life and willing to pay, only to find out their life is payment. There are the traffickers and their "employees" and a sadistic priest as well. Strangely enough, there is also a love story between two of those who "survived" and now find themselves wanting the same freedom that those they kidnap and trade wanted as well.

Surreal, disturbing, and dark. And I totally recommend.

What a weird book. I requested an ARC of the English translation from a giveaway listed on Library Thing, but I probably should have skipped this one. The whole story, and all the characters were just too vague. I liked the idea of the premise, which was inspired by the Divine Comedy by Dante. But nothing was explained well enough that I fully understood what was going on. Every character was an utterly despicable specimen, and because I didn't understand who they were, or what led them to become who they were I didn't care what ended up happening to any of them.

I'm having a heck of time trying to describe this book, partly because I didn't care what happened in it, and partly because it was so oddly told. The gist of the story was a day in the life of a group of human traffickers. As in people who steal other people, then torture them into submission, then sell them for money. Oh, and rape all the women along the way as the mood strikes them. The setting is a kind of hazy mashup of many stereotypes of Central American settings. There's rocky deserts. A dense jungle. A lot of dust. Bad roads. People traveling in a northward direction seeking El Paraiso, but finding only El Infierno. I gather much of this story was inspired by true events, as throughout the story there are descriptions of the trials and tortures of people who are desperate to leave their Infiernos for even a glimmer of Paraisos. These were taken from interviews conducted by the author, Emiliano Monge who is a journalist in Mexico. It's possible that he was trying to give humanity to the captors of these people, but he didn't give enough of a backstory for it to matter.

I didn't hate reading this book, but it did feel like a chore to get through. I also probably wouldn't recommend this to people since it seems so inaccessible. The good thing about this book is that it pulls no punches with describing the horrors faced by those who we in the United States call "undocumented immigrants." If I thought it might a shine a real light on the things these people face I might force people to read it, but it just doesn't hit that note.

Among the Lost was a unique story about modern day human trafficking. The interwoven love story between the two, anti-hero traffickers, however, fell flat for me. Although, their actions were despicable, I still should have been able to empathize with them on some level but I never did. In fact, I never connected with any of the characters except for Mauseleo. In addition, the climax didn't quite meet the level of build-up given beforehand; and the conclusion left a few unanswered questions. On a positive note, the action propelled the story at a good pace and I did appreciate the lyrical writing style. I would definitely read another book by Monge.½

This is a compelling story about the lives broken, twisted, and ended by the practice of human trafficking around the U.S./Mexico border. The two protagonists, Epitafio and Estela, were themselves trafficked as children. Given to an orphanage run by a corrupt Catholic priest, they were constantly abused and raised to continue the human trafficking trade.

The action of the story takes place over the course of a typical day. It begins with them intercepting a large group of migrants. They kill some and lock the rest into a few trailers and set out to sell them. Epitafio and Estela are in love, they have been in love their whole life, but the priest who raised them would not allow them to be together. Epitafio had been married to another woman that he did not love.

Estela herself has a secret. She knows that the priest is up to something. She's tried telling Epitafio but he's not ready to abandon the life they have. But Estela hopes to convince him tonight to run away with her. She is pregnant, but more importantly, she's knows that they are likely to be betrayed soon.

Still, neither of them realizes that tonight is the night everything will change. A plan is already underway to kill Estela and overthrow Epitafio. In this dark night, as they drive through the jungle and over the mountains with trailers full of suffering people, our two protagonists will lose their friends one by one.

This is a complex story interspersed with actual accounts of trafficked migrants and excerpts from Dante's Inferno. It's a powerful story of suffering and cruelty acted out in generational cycle. A dark book about the trauma humanity can inflict on itself.

Among the Lost reimagines the Mexican landscape as a post-apocalyptic world filled with cruelty and savagery. However, within this desolate place, there is this tragic beauty found in the devotion between star-crossed lovers Epitafio and Estela. Unlike Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde, Epitafio and Estela are no innocents--both former victims of human trafficking and now purveyors of the industry, they repeatedly engage in shocking acts of depravity and brutality, including torture and domestic abuse. The story follows the two as they work together to get their latest shipment of people across the country while beset by the authorities, rivals, and traitors within their own cartel. Peppered throughout the story are these startling vignettes of violence and suffering from actual Mexican migrants, reminding us of the real-life horrors that illegal immigrants today endure. Among the Lost is an experimental novel and it can take a few chapters to get used to the author's way of writing. It is not an easy read in either style or content, but it is a very powerful and timely work of literature and one I strongly recommend.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of Among the Lost through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers; however, this has not affected my review or rating of the book in any way. Among the Lost will be available in the U.S. on June 4, 2019.

A really good book. Human traffickers somewhere in Central America--maybe Mexico capturing groups of migrants to sell into slavery. The traffickers themselves started out as migrants/slaves pretty much the same. It's very intense and there's kind of a weird love angle to it but mixed in is all kinds of violence and rage and a Roman Catholic priest who pulls a lot of the strings and cops/guns for hire. Before I was done with the book I checked out Emiliano Monge and he has one other book in translation besides this and I bought it which is to say I'd recommend reading Among the Lost...but it's not a happy story.½

Novela ganadora del IX Premio Iberoamericano de Novela Elena Poniatowska.Recrea el drama colectivo de la migracion en un espacio corrompido por la miseria y la moral de los seres que lo habitan pero tambien donde surge una historia enigmatica de amor inesperado.En lo profundo de la selva y de la noche se encienden varios reflectores y un grupo de inmigrantes es sorprendido y atacado por otro grupo de hombres y mujeres, presas de la patria en la que viven y de sus propias historias. Asi arranca esta road novel que atraviesa una nacion donde los seres humanos son reducidos a mercancia, donde la violencia es el escenario en el que suceden todas las historias y donde Emiliano Monge vuelve a destilar las esencias de una Latinoamerica salvaje.Un holocausto del siglo XXI, pero tambien una historia de amor: la de Estela y Epitafio, jefes de la banda de secuestradores. Una historia de altisimo voltaje estilistico y ritmo trepidante, donde la ficcion y la realidad -testimonios de inmigrantes dan forma a los coros de la novela- entretejen un mosaico conmovedor, perturbador y memorable. A través de los protagonistas y de la masa de inmigrantes, cuya individualidad se desmorona poco a poco, se desnuda el horror y la soledad, pero también la lealtad y la esperanza que combaten en el corazón del ser humano