Scary Monsters

Scary Monsters
Michelle de Kretser
RRP:
NZ$ 47.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 38.39
Hardback
h216 x 135mm - 320pg
6 Jan 2022 UK
International import eta 10-19 days
9781838953959
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
' 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. 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. 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. 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? '
Every page of her story feels charged, like an open circuit waiting for its switch; a lurking wallop. It' s magnificent, peerless writing. * Guardian Australia * Written with incandescent moral energy, profound compassion, and astonishing precision and beauty, Michelle de Kretser' s Scary Monsters extends the very possibilities of the novel form. On the contemporary international scene, there are very, very few writers who can match her style, her intelligence, her vision. To read her is to be changed. -- Neel Mukherjee In Scary Monsters de Kretser addresses the weightiest of subjects with the lightest and deftest of touches, and the result is funny, playful, painful, angry and, above all, ferociously smart. It' s a dazzling novel, by a hugely talented author. -- Sarah Waters A radically brilliant diptych-novel, in complex conversation with itself and with the world we live in, written by one of the living masters of the art of fiction. A beautifully troubling book. -- Max Porter I love the way Scary Monsters asks urgent questions about what kind of future we might be sleepwalking towards. And heightens the enquiry by looking back; by unsettling and disturbing our sense of where we are now and where we are headed by dissecting - with exquisite deftness - the barely-concealed misogyny and racism of then, to awaken our senses tonow. It' s a novel of luminous intelligence and profound depth, written with verve, humour and exceptional elegance. -- Monica Ali Bold, spare and completely original, one of the most exciting contemporary novels I' ve read for a very long time. -- Preti Taneja Scary Monsters is a marvel. Each of the two very different parts of the novel had me totally riveted, intensely absorbed, wowed by de Kretser' s scathing accuracy - whether she' s chronicling youth' s delights and distortions or a future where prosperity is the new "unethics. " It' s a wildly remarkable book that unfolds like no other. -- Joan Silber, author of SECRETS OF HAPPINESS and IMPROVEMENT [A]n inventive, satirical and confronting exploration of the migrant experience. * Books + Publishing * Is it possible we already have the year' s best novel? I' ll be amazed if anything surpasses this compulsive, exquisitely light-footed narrative. . . glorious. * Daily Mail on THE LIFE TO COME * De Kretser' s satirical observations - on the literati, self-congratulation, suburban pretension - are so subtly deboning they remind me of Jane Austen' s. . . The Life to Comedeserves all the gongs we can bang for it. * Spectator on THE LIFE TO COME * Exhilaratingly good writing. . . each page yields sparkling sentences and keen observations. * Literary Review on THE LIFE TO COME * [de Kretser' s] writing captures, with unflagging wit, grace and subtlety, the spiritual as well as physical journeys of people on the move - between cultures, mindsets and stages of growth. -- Boyd Tonkin * Financial Times on THE LIFE TO COME *
Michelle de Kretser was born in Sri Lanka and emigrated to Australia when she was 14. She was educated in Melbourne and Paris. She is the author of five other novels: The Rose Grower, The Hamilton Case, The Lost Dog, which was longlisted for both the Man Booker and the Orange Prize, Questions of Travel, which won several prizes including the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the Prime Minister' s Literary Award, and The Life to Come, winner of the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She lives in Sydney.
Status: No local stock, title imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781838953959
Published: 6 Jan 2022
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Atlantic Books
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Format: Hardback
Height: 216mm
Width: 135mm
Spine: 22mm
Weight: 429g
Pages: 320

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