Review: Last Night I Sang to the Monster

Last Night I Sang to the Monster by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The last of the four BAS novels that my library carries for me to read (though Aristotle and Dante, I had to order from San Diego because my library just has too few copies of it and too much demand, but that's neither here nor there), and for sure one of the best. I think A&D were still a shade better, but this book, more bite-sized and yet more intense, is a very, very close second.

Thanks to Harry getting me acquainted with Sáenz's body of work, I've come to recognize a lot of the same tropes recurring throughout - bad relationships between male family members, anger management issues, and through it all, boys and men learning to love. Maybe my life hasn't been as bad as those Sáenz writes for his characters, but my God, I can connect to them all way too easily. Especially Zach, when he points out that he's been thrown into adulthood and can't fucking swim (paraphrased.)

I'll have to keep looking for more Sáenz books outside my library, but hopefully I'll find more of them soon. And hopefully they'll be on a level with this and A&D for me too.

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