Zana’s Reviews > What the Forest Devours: A Novel > Status Update

“Benedicta understood Ifigenia completely. She had birthed her, after all. No, that wasn’t quite right. She hadn’t birthed her so much as shat her out. That’s how birthing a piece-of-shit child works: you take the most agonizing dump of your life, crap a fetus between contractions.”

👁️👄👁️

“Benedicta kept eating crickets. She’d scour every nook and cranny for them, and sometimes the hacienda, like a doting granny, would give them to her: it’d lead her straight to the motherlode, teach her how to identify the chirp of the fattest crickets and pluck them from their moist hidey-holes to satisfy her cravings.”

This book is so gross

“...so I dipped into the deep, dark well of female fury and reached for a wood plank, perfect for pulverizing rats. While Benedicta sang about the whiskers on this coal-black beast she imagined was a cat, I smashed its fat head in, burst its fat body, snapped its four fat feet. Meow fucking meow, motherfucker.”

Wtf is happening 🐀

“...From her hiding place, Ifigenia likes to watch her thrash every hen in sight, calling them over just to punt them with her boot. Here chickee chickee, and the hens, still idiots, return. But maybe the hens are no different from Ifigenia, stupid enough to keep coming back.”

Girl what

“During their routine inspections in the latrine, her mother would sit across from her on the floor, scrawling dates onto a board and scheduling insemination for the opportune time of month. She would weigh Benedicta’s breasts like udders in her hands, probe her nipples for changes in texture or tenderness, squeeze her hands to test for swelling, and catalogue any pimples she found along the contour of her chin.”

Oh

“Grandma chewed her lip. I am not fat, Benedicta. I am old. Your bones get harder when you’re old. That’s what makes you heavy.”

Damn open the schools

“...because the instant Ifigenia said crazy, we heard Grandma cry out and fall to the ground: she crashed against the wood and there was a horrible cracking sound. But none of us got out of bed. Better to let her lie there than reveal that we’d been spying and that Ifigenia had even seen her bald hoo-hoo exposed to the cold night air.”

These are certainly words