I haven’t had the chance to check out Tender Is The Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica’s international hit, so I figured I would treat myself with her latest outing. The Unworthy is a nightmarish fever dream in which one woman chronicles her time with a cloister of women in a post-apocalyptic world devastated by climate change.
The world has come and gone. In the darkness of her cell, a woman writes about her life in secret, away from the prying eyes of her sisters. She writes using whatever she can find: berries, charcoal from the secluded monks, and sometimes even her own blood. She is an Unworthy, one of the lowest ranks within the Sacred Sisterhood. She hides her diary daily, because if she were caught, she would be punished, either by the Superior Sister and her notorious flog, or possibly even burned at the stake. When not afraid of punishment, she longs to rise to the ranks of the Enlightened. One day, a mysterious outsider finds her way within the walls of the convent and upends the order that has saved so many. But is the Sacred Sisterhood the haven it sets out to be?
Sarah Moses has done a wonderful job translating this story, at least from my experience. There is a definite character to the writing that oozes off the pages, and that has to come from Bazterrica and a very careful understanding by Moses. There is a sparseness to the prose that cuts right to the bone. The author minces no words in her writing, each one a deliberate addition to her story, made all the more tangible by her choice of ink. She purposefully highlights when she is using specific kinds in ways that make my constantly ruminating brain light up. The events, both daily happenings and flashbacks, are written with such a present intensity it both pulls the reader in while reminding them that this is not their world. Words have their own meaning. The Sacred Sisterhood is opaque to the reader but feels incredibly real to the author of the story. It creates a terrifying feeling that you can’t know where the future will take you, and the world you will learn to survive in.
There are no formal chapter breaks per se, and the way the story is broken up is clever. Words and sentences are cut off as the author has to quickly hide her writing as Superior Sister stalks the night. Explanations are often given, or apologies made to the reader by the author as she explains why she got cut off. The enthralling aspect is that the cut off areas always feel like half finished thoughts that are rarely revisited, lost to circumstance. It makes the diary feel desperate. The flashbacks are written at first with trepidation and take up less space. But as the author digs deeper into them, they become fuller memories with all the horror and beauty that comes with it. The descriptions of the world she grew up in are brutal as they are written with a detached acceptance. She barely understood the world that existed before the tumultuous times, and she doesn’t dwell on it either. The memories lend evidence to why she lives as she does now in the convent.
The story plays a lot with how women are treated in times of great unrest. There is a lot of emphasis on beauty unmarred by the various plagues that exist in the author’s world. The wholeness of one’s body, and the purity of it are markers by which to judge whether one is Enlightened or Unworthy. The tiers are reinforced not only by Superior Sister and her powerful form and mythically violent past, but by the women the Sacred Sisterhood pledges to keep safe as well. Women are chided for speaking out, looking weak, holding onto old faiths, or failing to perform their duties. Each one of them is hoping that their vicious mockery of the other Unworthy will gain them a small bit of light from Superior Sister’s eyes. But it rarely comes. And even once you’re Enlightened, you disappear from everyone else’s presence, destined to serve the father as he sees fit. And where it all leads to is horror at its finest; what others will do to ensure their own safety, their own place within the system. The author’s reflection of her life really digs into this theme as she tries to remember who she was before the Sacred Sisterhood, and why she longs to become Enlightened.
The Unworthy fits into my post-apocalyptic reading project, and slots in nicely with my disposition toward climate crisis fiction. It’s excellently written and leaves enough to your imagination to let the psychological aspects of its horror sink in. It’s strange, and dare I say, gorgeous in its worldbuilding. The structure of the story is playful at times too, giving the diary feeling extra oomph. I’m sure you don’t need another reminder that the world is terrible to women, and that other women can be just as willing to hurt women to get a spot at the top. But if you want it distilled in a horror novel that tries to converse with why it happens, The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica is there waiting.
Rating: The Unworthy – Don’t underestimate yourself, become Enlightened.
-Alex
