This is genuinely one of the most fucked-up, disgusting, unsettling, cerebral, entrancing, and horrifying books I have ever read.
Did I say during my read that I was disgusted by one part in particular and said that it didn't need to be in the book? Yes.
Do I still give this book a high rating? Yes.
Is this book for everyone? No, absolutely not. Even the translator Sarah Booker said in her note at the end of the book that she had to step away sometimes. Do not read this if you are faint of heart. Here's some trigger/content warnings:

Spoiler

rape, adult and child pornography, child rape, bestiality, animal cruelty, incest, gender dysphoria, body dysmorphia, sadomasochism, self-harm, harm against children and infants.

Without further adieu, let's talk about Nefando by Mónica Ojeda.

In Barcelona, 6 young adults share an apartment. Two of them are Mexicans, Kiki and Iván, are writers. Kiki is writing a pornographic about the twisted desires of two bisexual boys, Diego and Eduardo, and the girl who disrupts their lives, Nella. Kiki's chapters focus both on herself and her struggles to write but also are chapters from the actual book she's writing. Iván is also struggling to write; his chapters are in the second person and he's struggling with his gender and body. There's the Spanish video game developer El Cuco, who allies himself with a racist and xenophobic demoscene group, bot because he agrees with them, but because they can get him money. And then there are the withdrawn, shadowy, less focused on Ecuadorean siblings Irene, Emilio, and Cecilia Terán who receive money from their abusive father and are on scholarship, but don't go to any classes. Other than their individual arts and the apartment, what ties all of them together is a now defunct online game, the titular Nefando. Created by the Terán siblings and made manifest by El Cuco, Nefando caused a shock amongst some of its many players. It was taken down for not only its horrific content, but because of what could be "unlocked" one the game was "completed."
Jumping between interviews with Kiki, Iván, and El Cuco after the game is taken down, and perspectives set in the not too distant past, in the siblings' dark childhood, and in Kiki's novel, Nefando is a truly unsettling novel where readers are confronted with the most sickest ideas and interpersonal atrocities and are left to wonder: How...How could someone not only write about this, but how could people in real life do any of these things to another human being? "Nefando" is Spanish for "heinous" or "nefarious" or "unspeakable," and the book certainly lives up to its title.

I have read Ojeda before; I know what she's capable of writing. [b:Jawbone|44074748|Jawbone|Mónica Ojeda|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617300293l/44074748._SX50_.jpg|61049155], her first novel translated in English, was a Lovecraftian story about the fears and terrors of young women coming-of-age. Nefando is on an entirely different level, pushing against and ripping apart limits that Jawbone only occasionally nearly tore through. As I said, there's one part on the book in particular that invoked complete objection and revulsion out of me. Perhaps, that was Ojeda's point, but while I still think this a good book, in spite and despite of all the horrific stuff, I still don't think Ojeda needed to go THAT far. I understand what she was doing. Nefando, particularly in Kiki's novel chapters, invokes various taboo and controversial novels and authors. Everything from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's [b:Venus in Furs|427354|Venus in Furs|Leopold von Sacher-Masoch|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1542732039l/427354._SY75_.jpg|2469460] and the Marquis de Sade to William Gibson's [b:Neuromancer|6088007|Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)|William Gibson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554437249l/6088007._SY75_.jpg|909457] and Alan Moore's [b:Lost Girls|58652|Lost Girls|Alan Moore|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388194140l/58652._SX50_.jpg|2783480] are mentioned or referenced. Like de Sade, Ojeda does have a point to everything; thought she doesn't go as far as he did and philosophically-speaking, I am more drawn to her message than his.

The prose in this book is a bit different than what was in Jawbone. The latter had a bit more of an omniscient third-person going on, interspersed with some unreliable first-person perspectives. Nefando's third person is less omniscient, but is just as psychodramatic and personal. What Ojeda really accomplished here was that with each perspective, she managed to make them feel all entirely differently from one another without losing the psychological tone and atmosphere so central to the book. For me personally, Iván's was the strongest. He's story, besides maybe the Terán siblings', is the most pitiable; though he is not a good person like Kiki and El Cuco. Ojeda employs a personal and throat-choking second person style in Iván's chapters. Iván is struggling with his body. He has attempted to castrate himself, or at least, mutilate his penis, several time. He has dreamed of phantom breasts and a vulva for himself. Is Iván a trans woman or transfeminine? Very possibly. However, don't come to this book looking for "representation;" as I said, Iván is NOT a good person. Iván tries to discover what is giving him his struggles with his gender and body, but he has no childhood trauma and has suffered no cruelty. Rather, he committed a cruel act as a teen and as a young adult commits at least one cruel act upon a poor dog. Are these depraved acts manifestations of his struggle? Possibly. What's interesting about Iván's perspective, is that the images and motifs of the Aztec gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca are invoked with his internal struggle. Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca are important gods in Aztec mythology; here, the feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl represents Iván's penis and manhood and the shattered obsidian mirror of Tezcatlipoca represents his fractured self. One repeated line in Iván's story is that the "I" that is him and the "not-I" which is buried but keeps rearing its head are disconnected. This disconnect causes him to seek out pain unto himself and others. Pain is the only true way to be expelled from his body and experience the "not-I".

This discussion of the self and pain continues in Kiki's chapters, both the ones about herself and in her novel. Kiki grew up Catholic and has since distanced herself from the faith, but one thing she learned is that Christianity was the first to interlace pain with the feeling of salvation/ecstasy/freedom. She believes that the suffering of the saints is a precursor to things like BDSM and the concept of pain meeting pleasure has such an undeniable and inescapable hold on the world. Like Iván, Kiki seeks to understand how pain and perversity can make one transcend the bindings of the flesh. To her, pain cannot be explained, only experienced. Her novel, greatly inspired by both [b:The Confusions of Young Törless|29718|The Confusions of Young Törless|Robert Musil|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309376853l/29718._SY75_.jpg|836296] by Robert Musil and [b:Story of the Eye|436806|Story of the Eye|Georges Bataille|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1490682356l/436806._SX50_.jpg|616919] by Georges Bataille, follows the character Diego and Eduardo as they dive into the most perverted desires, starting as children. As they grow into high school students, their sexuality takes a turn into more violent and humiliating desires that they inflict on their classmates and they end up writing pornographic comics and novellas that are secretly passed around the school. Soon, a girl named Nella arrives. She is initially indifferent to their sexual acts, but when she captures a picture of the two of them in private, Diego and Eduardo get her camera and they see what's on it: animal mutilations. Nella's desire is rooted in harming and mutilating animals which the boys realize they can't be without. Kiki's perverse novel is ultimately a reflection of the desires she herself represses, but also her investigation into pain and pleasure. She also seems to point out, that men, or perhaps more specifically, men who are writers/content creators of the perverse, cannot fathom the lengths that their women counterparts can go to. After all, the novel is Kiki's sole invention, her story. She does not even mind masturbating in public while an old man watches her as she writes. The pain and cruelty she injects into her novel is meant to shock her readers, much like Ojeda's project, and rouse them from passivity into action. Perhaps that is also the point of Nella's character in her novel. However, despite Kiki's goal--a political one, it could be argued--there's a recurring theme that is subtly hinted at in her chapters, as in Iván and El Cuco's, that shows how flawed and inconsiderate her project is. More on that in a bit.

El Cuco's perspective is, admittedly, the weakest one. Although he is responsible for helpful the Terán siblings create Nefando, something never shown on page, his chapters, despite showing his own amoral life and actions, just aren't as interesting. Perhaps because he is the sole Spanish character, the one character from a colonizer country among those from a colonized ones, this was intentional. Still, his blasé attitude toward what is depicted in the Nefando game and the "unlockable" reward rounds back to the subtle theme I just mentioned above. If anything, El Cuco is the most interested in the Terán siblings, even pities them maybe. He has a fixation with the oldest sister Irene which isn't really sexual or romantic (perhaps that lies beneath), but still something about her keeps him hesitant to delve into a deeper relationship or understanding. Again, more on this in a bit.

Finally, the Terán siblings. We only get each of their perspectives once and it's when they are children, during which their father is horrifically sexually abusing them and recording it and uploading it online. Irene's sole chapter is her father throwing her in a pool as a child and trying to make her swim. Emilio's is more graphic about the rape he and his sisters and several other children and even babies--this was the chapter that disgusted me--were victims of. Here, he declares that his sisters are him and he is his sisters. And in Cecilia's chapter were merely get her art pieces. We learn that the "unlockable" prize within the bizarre and perverted Nefando game is property of the Terán siblings themselves: It is a video of them being assaulted by their father as children. There are different "paths" in the game to get to it, but it was the end prize before the game was taken down and the siblings left Spain.
In the interviews with Kiki, Iván, and El Cuco after the siblings left, each of them, while pitying the siblings, displays an indifferent attitude towards the video being in the game, even though Kiki and Iván say they had no involvement with the game or played it. Kiki even says it's wrong for the police to try arrest the Terán siblings because they are the victims in the video, it's there's to do with. But did Kiki and Iván really have no role in Nefando? This is just solely my theory based on circumstantial evidence from my reading, but here goes: In the game, before the "reward," players find a sleeping woman on the bed. They can mutilate her, inspect her, or just leave her alone. Inspecting her reveals the name of a female character from a classic transgressive novel carved into her arm, the name is different for each player. Leaving her alone allows her pubic hair and other parts of her body to grow and change at an alarming rate and for the room to change. In Kiki's novel, Eduardo and Diego write a novella where Wanda from Venus in Furs and O from [b:Story of O|16099157|Story of O|Pauline Réage|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1353114768l/16099157._SY75_.jpg|2462307] find themselves in a Gothic castle and in its basement they discover imprisoned women with the names of classic passive female characters carved into their bodies. Likewise, Iván's perspective is filled uncertainties about his own body and the female body of his not-I. Perhaps Kiki and Iván did have a role in the game. Perhaps the siblings discovered their secrets. Who knows? But Kiki and Iván aren't innocent.
In the last pages of the book, El Cuco talks about his ambivalent feelings towards Irene Terán and how he shared a childhood trauma with her, eventually realizing at some point Emilio swapped places with her at some point unbeknownst to him. Nonetheless, El Cuco wonders why Irene and her brother and sister still receive money from their father and hold onto the video of their abuse and call their father a monster. She simply replies, "He's a man, not a monster." The siblings suffered at the hands of a humanity, not a monstrosity.
There are no real monsters--no vampires, ghouls, werewolves, etc. There is only humanity. It was a human, their father, who raped them as innocent children. It was humans who brutally colonized the Americas and enslaved African and Indigenous peoples. It was humans who nearly wiped out the Jewish people, and other subaltern ethnicities, in Europe during the Holocaust. It was humans who massacred the Chinese people and others in the Nanjing Massacre and forced the women into being comfort women. It was humans in Boko Haram and ISIS killing young boys and taking girls for sex slavery. And it is humans dropping bombs on the homes of the people of Palestine in the year that I write this (2024).
Human beings can be their own monster and Irene, Emilio, and Cecilia were victims of one. This one of Ojeda's points about Nefando. All of the disgusting things that happen in this book, any person is capable of doing them; many people already have. Even Kiki, El Cuco, and Iván are capable of doing it. However, this is the moment I was alluding to earlier, the subtle hint throughout the book. For Kiki and Iván child abuse and sexual assault are "What ifs," distant possibilities, but not realities they have face; try as they might with a pornographic novel and false explanation for discomfort with gender and the body. El Cuco has a trauma from childhood, but it isn't sexual. The Terán siblings are actually victims for what is a phantasy and fantasy (I use both words intentionally here) for the others and all the latter three can do is just offer gentle aphorisms or feel weirded out by them. In way, however, by holding onto the video and demanding money from their father the siblings have inverted their victim status. Their father is a famous director in Ecuador and perhaps if the video saw the light of day his life would be ruined--that is speculation on my part, the book never addresses the reasons.

Perhaps Irene, Emilio, and Cecilia, have accomplished what Kiki and Iván have always wanted, been expelled from their selves by pain to see themselves wholly. But that pain was not thrown unto them by their choice or consent and we only get so much from them. Perhaps Kiki, Iván, and El Cuco will never understand what the Terán siblings went through. Perhaps they don't want to.

Nefando lives up to the translations of its name and Ojeda lives up to her goal of being a horror author who takes us to disturbing places. One thing is also certain: A pain that you have never experienced, never been subject to, especially one you play with in your "arts," has always been experienced by someone else who will know it far more deeply than you.
Do you care about them?

5.75/10

definitely a very disturbing book that covers many darker themes. what i find ojeda does well is balancing the narratives between the different characters with her different styles and forms of writing that she dedicates to each. it definitely doesn't follow the typical outline of a novel and instead utilizes a variety of different formats to convey the messages of each of the characters and novel's overarching them. it can be a hard story to follow at times (or honestly most of the time), but i do believe that trying to piece together what is going on in the story to be one of the key aspects of what makes this novel unique and the purpose of the novel's story.

i do find the story overall to be a little lacking in theme and message, however. for the themes that it does cover, i would say that the manner in which they are handled are not necessarily in the best manner; the mass "dump" of more heavy themes combined with the nonlinear/not as easily followed storyline can make it difficult to tell what the novel is trying to portray about these notions, and i do think that does take away from what likely was the author's original intention through the novel's premise.

Perturbador es poco, este libro te desgarra.
Tengo un agujero en el pecho

Es el libro más difícil y terrorífico que leí hasta el momento, por momentos tuve que parar con la lectura porque me impactó lo descriptivo que se volvió en algunas partes. Sin embargo, no pude dejar de leerlo y seguir adentrándome a las múltiples historias perturbadoras de cada personaje. Es un libro no apto para todo público pero no dejaría de recomendarlo (con un trigger warning acompañado).

Siento que esta novela es un reflejo del juego dentro de la misma, porque al igual que en este, aquí no pasa nada.
Lo leemos y terminamos por el morbo, por descubrir nuevos horrores, por el shock value y nada más.

¿Hay palabras para todo el silencio que vendrá?
Lidiar no únicamente con el dolor, sino lidiar con la responsabilidad de qué hacer con el dolor. Las palabras nunca nos alcanzan.

[17/10/21] La literatura quizá sea eso, no solo el confiar que las palabras podrán contener[nos] sino también en habitar esa potencialidad.

[07/10/22] Es necesario destruir el signo para poder reconstruirse desde la frontera