Book Review – Agustina Bazterrica - The Unworthy 2025 Pushkin Press

Spoilers

Book Cover - The Unworthy.

Given that this is quite a short novel, in a genre I love, horror, and post-apocalyptic dystopia as well as touching on themes I relate to by personal experience (being ensnared in a religious cult in the early 1980’s), I found it quite an uphill slog.

There are good elements to this, especially the creation of the book itself, written by an un-named unreliable narrator in secret, with whatever materials she can get hold of, from crushed insects to her own blood. Frequently, the narrative stops as if she has been interrupted in mid-writing and had to hide the book quickly. At other times, lines are crossed out as as if touching on concerns too painful for the narrator to address. We know from the ending that the book is hidden in the hope of discovery giving the work a Gothic feel, as many true Gothic writings were written in found-fragments of a longer narrative.

We know the World has faced social collapse due to environmental disaster. There has been catastrophic flooding, bursts of acid rain, and some kind of AI related meltdown. The young narrator can barely remember the last of the before times. She found herself united with a band of children called The Tarantula kids, foraging and stealing their way round, with her as their story teller and leader.

Separated from them, she bonds with Circe, until they are brutally assaulted by marauding men, and Circe is killed in the attack. The narrator them finds herself in the ruins of a once Catholic convent, run with brutal sadism by the Superior Sister and a mostly mentioned but unseen patriarchal figure referred to only as ‘He’. The Unworthy are those members of the order unworthy of getting closer to He. Those who have had the privileged of uniting with him (sexually as it proves to no real surprise), have their tongues ripped out and other mutilations. Some are simply never seen again.

The narrator herself is not averse to cruelty, to animals (the opening page describes her gleefully tearing legs off a cockroach), and she enjoys seeing hurt come to other unworthy, though when she does try to develop relationships with other girls coming into the convent community and she is deeply distressed when they are killed. One girl she has a short lived relationship with gets buried alive.

Too much is left unexplained and the non-linear narration, as if the pages found are out of sequence (there are no numbered chapter breaks), and some of the work might be lost or damaged too badly to salvage) which makes the book hard to read. Characters, including the narrator, are not very likeable, though the voice source does soften and become more sympathetic as the work progresses.

The finale is absurd, where after attacking the Superior Sister, and receiving mortal wounds, the protagonist flees, still writing the last pages while both running and bleeding out, hiding them in a tree hollow before we are left assuming that she dies.

I have tried here to relate the story in sequence. Too much defies credibility. It is unclear just how anyone in the convent survives as they seem to have no decent food or true survival skills. Though they see Catholicism in contempt, the order is run very much as a strict matriarchal Catholic religious order, with flagellation, inquisitions, whippings, and sexual abuse. Given the number of flagellation and torture wounds, including ripped out tongues, that are not treated medically or with medications, the girls and convent dwellers would all have bled to death or died of infection related illnesses.

There are hints of hope. Much of the book refers to swarms of wasps, with a girl called Lucia seemingly miraculously immune to their stings, but towards the close, bees and honey are seen, hinting that the Earth is healing. The hiding of the book is reflective of the book version of Margaret Ashwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which concludes with a book of the horrors faced being discovered when society has become more utopian generations later.

There are far too few references to men, other than some of the Tarantula gang, the woodland rapists and He. This World seems too doomed. The convent cult is too dysfunctional to endure the conditions of the trashed environment in which it operates. The narrator seems to do little to deserve her keep there even as an Unworthy. We know virtually nothing about He beyond his presence and eventually, his gross appetites. I found that I had little to relate to or care about here at all. The author seems to use violence and shock quite gratuitously or for the sake of injecting some action into proceedings. I found myself wondering how any of the characters we see survive at all in such desolation. They are totally ill-equipped for enduring. The collection of rain water, described as both fresh and acidic at different times is the only thing they seem to do credibly. Otherwise they are living off insects and grubs. The narrator stumbles into the convent soon after surviving her rape torment and being left for dead, but then seems to become a full on convert to the beliefs, without the author showing how. There is no sense of how this cult brainwashes its followers or why there are not more rebellions and escapes.

Pub Sign - Vinyl Tap - Preston

Huge thanks to Millie Angel and everyone at the Beer & Books Club, Vinyl Tap, Preston.

Quite a few attendees were surprised when I mentioned that I had spent some time in a strict religious cult myself, which affected my thoughts on the convent cult in The Unworthy. Here are some pages relating to my cult experiences. Happy to give a more complete talk on my experiences.

The Cult Years 1981-1985 https://arthurpeterchappell.wixsite.com/homepage/post/how-i-ended-up-in-a-cult-1981-1985

40 Years Later – Am I still affected by my experiences? https://arthurpeterchappell.wixsite.com/homepage/post/forty-years-on-life-after-the-divine-light-mission-cult

The Cult’s own history. https://arthurpeterchappell.wixsite.com/homepage/post/history-of-a-cult-maharaji-the-divine-light-mission

Photos taken by myself.

If you like my writings and you would like to see more, you can help fund my activity with a modest donation or two to my new Buymeacoffee Donations Page https://buymeacoffee.com/arthurchappell?new=1

Arthur Chappell.