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…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Scary Monsters as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
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…
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.
If you love Scary Monsters...
The High House
The Victorian mansion, Evenmere, is the mechanism that runs the universe.
The lamps must be lit, or the stars die. The clocks must be wound, or Time ceases. The Balance between Order and Chaos must be preserved, or Existence crumbles.
Appointed the Steward of Evenmere, Carter Anderson must learn the…
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