About This Book

The Unworthy is a dystopian horror novel that follows a woman in a fanatical religious cult. She is narrating her experience as best she can on hidden bits of paper written in snatches of time. If her words were to be found it would surely be nothing but misery and punishment to follow and yet she is unable to stop herself from writing it all down. There are holes in her memory, things she can’t quite remember about who she once was outside before The Sacred Sisterhood. The world is desolate and plagued with contagion but if one has faith they will have refuge.

My Thoughts

I am thrilled to see another English translation by Agustina Bazterrica. As a big fan of Tender is the Flesh I was very eager to get my hands on another story by her. Unreliable narrators and religious fanaticism are two of my favorite things in fiction and this book has both. I enjoyed the writing, the sort of hastily done pieces of narration where our narrator only has so much time or is interrupted. This story doesn’t shy away from the gruesome. It’s certainly a sort of skin crawling experience to read about the torture and violence these women exact on each other in the name of being faithful and dutiful. It seemed untenable the things they all do in the hopes of becoming more than an Unworthy and ascend to being Enlightened.

I always enjoy a story that has so much shrouded in mystery and leaves you as a reader trying to figure it all out through narrow glimpses. What happened to the world? What do all these states of being chosen mean? There’s just endless questions and nothing to do except read on in the hopes of learning the answers. There are a lot of religious overtones as one might expect but there are lots of sharp barbs about climate change, bodily autonomy, and indoctrination buried in the story to examine.

The novel was beautifully translated and yet again Augstina Bazterrica remains an instant buy author for me.

My thanks to Scribner and Net Galley for the advanced copy