A peculiar, atmospheric novella told in pseudo-documentary style. 

In a series of flash forwards and flashbacks, we're dropped into the fictional town of San Cristóbal that suddenly becomes home to a large group of feral children, seemingly from the jungle. While the children start by begging and merely irritate the rest of the community, their behavior sharply heightens and culminates in a stabbing incident in supermarket. Our narrator is a social worker piecing together these events, both from his personal perspective and through a variety of primary and secondary sources.

I have to admit that I hoped for more here. More eeriness, more specificity, more affectedness. The narrator was quite detached ... which led to my personal detachment. There was a LOT of rumination and rhetorical questions, which led to some thought-provoking moments, but also a bit too much lag. This could have been an intense, visceral experience. It has been labeled as horror, but I don't find that to be accurate.

The topics and overarching themes are interesting for sure. The sense of the "other', the labels and assumptions we place on children//childhood "innocence", a sharp criticism of a society that both bemoans and neglects those that are suffering, and so on.

CW: child death, murder, violence, grief, terminal illness, torture, forced institutionalization, injury