Cirrus@Austlit

'Charting surreal and yet familiar worlds where hope and horror co-exist, Monster is ruthless, weird, dark and funny. These 33 stories explore loss, addiction, love and breakdown with unsentimental economy. Stories concern mothers losing or leaving children, relationships dangling by a thread or exploding. Some characters are institutionalised, others are profoundly lonely. Some just wander around — lost, while others are filled with shocking violence. There is joy here, too, and a kind of blazing intimacy in this debut collection of tough, tender and unflinching stories.'

Source : publisher's blurb

 (Introduction)

 (Publication abstract)

'The boy is running again. You can tell by his feet that’s what he is doing. It takes you some time to understand he is running – in the beginning the sound of those feet isn’t any way peculiar to the other morning sounds. I was once a boy myself but I was never like that: my steps never made that small smacking sound, smacking in their little rhythm along Sadlier Street.' (Introduction)

'By writing stories about ‘issues’, I was trying to respond to what I saw as urgent social and moral crises. The problem was that the more I wrote, the less satisfied I felt with my mode of response, the less confident I was about fiction’s capacity to do the job. At the same time, I was becoming increasingly concerned that I was using other people’s trauma for my own benefit.'  (Introduction)

'Karl had sharpened the knife exactly as I’d asked and he’d also brought home a bottle of Japanese whisky because he knew this was coming. He’d got started on the whisky in the car, out the front. I was drinking myself, watching him through the blinds, trying to decide if I would really do it or not. When he came inside I was sitting on the lounge. I had two clean glasses ready and he sat down beside me, stinking of beer, smoke and vegetable fat plus the cleaning products they use on the grill that take me way back to preschool.' (Introduction)

'Graham held the phone away from his head as Claudia ran the cold water. When the back tire of the car hit the cat they both felt the soft bump but they didn't hear the screams on account of the garage door. [...]it was Nicholas again, and Graham let him go on until he'd got the car door open and was sitting in the car and the doors were closed and his seat belt was on.' (Publication abstract)

'The accident happened on a Friday. It was reported on the six o’clock news. At half-past four the cameras found the street and interviewed the nurse on the lawn. His neighbour; she just happened to be a nurse. She rolled him; he screamed. A tragedy, he was such a nice man. A young man, a teacher at the local school. A nice, quiet man. A lovely friendly face at church.' (Introduction)