Agustina Bazterrica’s The Unworthy is an outstanding work of literary fiction and horror that speaks to grief, sisterhood and self-discovery while exposing humankind’s ugliest side. Readers of The Handmaid’s Tale looking for an even darker narrative will revel in this book.
Narrated through a woman’s surreptitious journal, The Unworthy follows her to a cult hidden far away from the lingering shadows of a society destroyed by unforgiving climate change and human selfishness. This cult, a convent called the Sacred Sisterhood, is made up of women, the only man present—referred to as “He” or “Him”—being the leader. Through the woman’s writing, which she does with anything she can get her hands on (dirt, stolen ink, and even her own blood), the reader explores the workings of the cult. These women are physically punished and abused, manipulated and made to adore a mysterious god, and put against each other. And yet their main concerns are to please “Him” and the Superior Mother, and to do everything in their power to one day be promoted from Unworthy to either Chosen or Enlightened – even if they have to destroy the others to accomplish so. They sacrifice everything: their names, their individuality, and their physical well-being.
The book is written in present-tense, which I found compelling. This choice of tense makes the book more immersive because you’re reading the story while the narrator is actively writing it. Words have a strong power in The Unworthy and it’s delightful to see the woman’s mindset evolution through her writing and word choice, adding additional layers of depth to the story and the character.
At first, the reality of the narrator might seem to be very removed from the readers’, and with a writing style that is matter-of-fact and raw, The Unworthy reads harsh and unhinged. However, like the excellent dystopian title it is, this story speaks to many issues hidden within the folds of modern society that we might not be actively aware of. One of the aspects that spoke to me the most is the way the women in the convent are kept divided and collaterally weak. The Superior Mother encouraged unhealthy competition and rivalry among the women, repeatedly asking them to create new punishments to be applied on an offending Unworthy, and rewarding the most terrible and wicked of them. I can’t help but think that if we break this concept to its bare bones, it’s not as different to how women have been encouraged to hate each other in real life. Society often demands too much from women and it’s not enough to excel at something. Women must be the prettiest, the smartest, the most talented—and such a mindset creates a set of conditions where sorority and true sisterhood struggle to bloom.
Another important aspect of the book is climate change. The Unworthy is set in a not-so-far-away future where the environment kept worsening until the world as we know it stopped existing because of the inhospitable weather. Despite being the ones who pushed the state of the world to that extreme, people’s greed can be unrelenting. In the book, they fight over resources and the stronger person abuses the weaker. In this way, The Unworthy mirrors one of the ugliest sides of people and a level of selfishness we’ve seen happening throughout history.
But it is sometimes during the darkest times that light shines the brightest—and so in this book there’s beauty hidden behind the horrors. The Unworthy is, too, a book about the pure, honest love shared among and between women (say, the joy of braiding each other’s hair in silent contemplation). It is, too, a reminder that there’s power in unity. Bazterrica has done an impressive work of packing infinite threads of meaning in such a short work of fiction.
Thought-provoking and vulnerable, The Unworthy is the book I needed in these times of uncertainty. It will leave a bittersweet aftertaste in your tongue and open-up a conversation that you won’t be able to ignore, reassuring you in its macabre sort of way.
Agustina Bazterrica, born in Buenos Aires in 1974, has a degree in arts from the University of Buenos Aires and works as a cultural manager and jury member in various literary contests. She is the author of the short story collection Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird, and the novels Matar al niña and Tender Is the Flesh, the latter of which was awarded the Clarín Novel Prize. Tender Is the Flesh established Bazterrica as a bestselling author worldwide, with translations into thirty languages and half a million copies sold in English alone. Tender Is the Flesh is currently being adapted for television. Her latest novel, The Unworthy, was published in Spanish in 2023 and received the same enthusiastic reception as Tender Is the Flesh, affirming Bazterrica’s status as a prominent author in contemporary literature.
Dianna Vega is a Dominican assistant editor, fiction writer, and poet based in Florida. She holds a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Central Florida. She is a 2024 Periplus Fellow. Her poetry has appeared in Outrageous Fortune, South Dakota Review, Tint Journal and Poetry Magazine.
