Scary Monsters

Book cover of Scary Monsters: A Novel in Two Parts

Book description

'Every page of her story feels charged, like an open circuit waiting for its switch; a lurking wallop. It's magnificent, peerless writing' Guardian

'When my family emigrated it felt as if we'd been stood on our heads.'

Michelle de Kretser's electrifying take on scary monsters turns the novel upside down…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Scary Monsters as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Paul Fischer

Author

Scary Monsters is more like two novellas in one, and you can start your reading experience from either cover, meeting at the middle.

You describe the two halves and they couldn’t sound more different – one is set in a near-future dystopian Australia, utterly believable and morally upside-down, and the other in 1980s France, following a young teacher preoccupied with rational and irrational fears.

Yet, not only is each brilliantly written, but taken together they conjure up an intense and unsettling charge, as much about the immigrant experience as about the fragile threads that make up society. I’ve never read…

From Paul's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Katherine Johnson

Author

I have just started reading this book (actually listening to it as an audiobook) and already it is one of my favourites. De Kretser is such an incredible writer. I found myself ‘rewinding’ the audiobook to hear sentences again and again. I lived with my young family in France in 2012 for the year, and De Kretser’s observations of French life are so (at times) cuttingly on point. I particularly loved the repetition of whether or not something was deemed interessant. "What is interesting about potatoes?" she asks. Her exposure of the historical French treatment of Algerians is woven…

From Katherine's list on "new" histories.