'From the twice-winner of the Miles Franklin Award, Scary Monsters is an affecting, profound and darkly funny exploration into racism, misogyny and ageism.
''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 neighbour. 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 mesmerising novel. Its reversible format enacts the disorientation that migrants experience when changing countries changes the story 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?'' (Publication summary)
The state is the coldest of all cold monsters. - Nietzsche
How does it feel to be a problem? W.E.B. Du Bois
'This year’s Miles Franklin shortlist is lyrical in voice, complex in form, and perhaps a little more hopeful than usual. The threads of shared concern across the volumes leave me wondering whether there is something in the zeitgeist.' (Introduction)
'Scary Monsters explores alienation with subtlety, insight and ambiguity.'
'The first thing to know about Scary Monsters is that it consists of two novellas bound top to tail within a single paperback. It’s a design decision that reinforces the world-turned-upside-down nature of the stories contained: one a narrative set in France – what that story’s narrator drolly labels le centre historique – and the other taking place in the ahistorical non-place of suburban Australia.' (Introduction)
'Miles Franklin-winner Michelle de Kretser offers unsettling possibilities and questions to ponder in her latest fiction.'
'With two stories and two front covers, the reader chooses where to start: in France in the past, or in a dystopian Australian future'
'The two-time Miles Franklin-winner’s new book, Scary Monsters, is in fact two books, with two front covers – and no clues as to where to start'
'This year’s Miles Franklin shortlist is lyrical in voice, complex in form, and perhaps a little more hopeful than usual. The threads of shared concern across the volumes leave me wondering whether there is something in the zeitgeist.' (Introduction)
