Scary Monsters

*** WINNER OF THE 2023 RATHBONES FOLIO FICTION PRIZE***ONE OF SLATE'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2022'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 - 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?'

Slyly intelligent...the book's overriding sense of anger and alarm also mingles with satirical glee. Even if she obviously has the apocalyptic drift of the present in sight, De Kretser passes on to the reader the inescapable feeling that she's also having fun, in this engaging amalgam of lament and warning shot., Every page of her story feels charged, like an open circuit waiting for its switch; a lurking wallop. It's magnificent, peerless writing., A carefully constructed pattern of thematic echoes...filled with unexpected details, apt quick literary brushstrokes and the gleam of humour. For what it's worth, I'd call it two novellas: but either way, it's terrific., Scary Monsters is a provocative and exhilarating game of snakes and ladders, Engrossing...a powerful portrait of feeling adrift in a hostile environment, suffused with stabs of beautiful description

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.