Scary Monsters
A Novel in Two Parts
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Finalist for the 2022 Kirkus Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Shortlisted for the 2023 Rathbones Folio Prize
Longlisted for the 2022 Gordon Burn Prize (UK)
A profoundly original exploration of racism, misogyny, and ageism—three monsters that plague the world—this novel from a beloved and prize-winning author is made up of two narratives, each told by a South Asian migrant to Australia
“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, just as migration has upended her characters’ lives.
Lili’s family migrated to Australia from Asia when she was a teenager.
Now, in the 1980s, she’s teaching in the south of France. She makes friends, observes the treatment handed out to North African immigrants, and is creeped out by her downstairs neighbor. All the while, Lili is striving to be A Bold, Intelligent Woman like Simone de Beauvoir.
Lyle works for a sinister government department in near-future Australia. An Asian migrant, he fears repatriation and embraces “Australian values.” He’s also preoccupied by his ambitious wife, his wayward children, and his strong-minded elderly mother. Islam has been banned in the country, the air is smoky from a Permanent Fire Zone, and one pandemic has already run its course.
Three scary monsters—racism, misogyny, and ageism—roam through this mesmerizing novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the stories of their lives. With this suspenseful, funny, and profound book, Michelle de Kretser has made something thrilling and new.
“Which comes first, the future or the past?”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
De Kretser's dark, subtle latest (after the critical study On Shirley Hazzard) offers two vastly different perspectives of immigrants' experiences in Australia and France. Lyle is a mid-level bureaucrat in near future Australia, coping with an erratic family and fears of deportation. Lili, a young woman who emigrated to Australia from South Asia as a teenager, moves to Paris in the mid-1980s with dreams of living as a "Bold, Intelligent Woman" like her idol, Simone de Beauvoir. Their parallel first-person narratives are not interwoven but presented as two separate stories in a reversible book. While teaching in the south of France, Lili falls in with a hedonistic young woman named Minna, who smokes and introduces her to the cinematheque. By contrast, dutiful family man Lyle fears the subtly growing totalitarianism of Australia, showcased by a ban on practicing Islam and a crematoria boom fueled by rising euthanasia (which perpetually dispels noxious smoke over Melbourne), but he is careful to suppress these fears. He has enough to worry about with the extravagances of his wife, Chanel; his elderly mother, Ivy; and two impulsive adult children. Much of the power comes from the matter-of-fact voices of the two protagonists, making for a disturbing and entirely believable depiction of social upheaval and repression, respectively. The sum leaves readers with a stirring look at the eerie links between past and present.
