Author(s): Michelle de Kretser

Novel | Read our reviews! | Australia | 2023 Folio Prize short list

WINNER OF THE 2023 FOLIO PRIZE FOR FICTION

'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?'

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STELLA'S REVIEW:
Scary Monsters is a novel of two distinct parts — two novellas — where you choose which story you read first — Lili's or Lyle's. I decided on chronological order. Lili’s story is set in Paris in the 1980s, and Lyle’s in a near-future Australia. 
If you’ve done an OE to Europe you will immediately step into Lili’s shoes. She’s teaching for a short time in Paris, on her way to Oxford, living at the top (all those stairs) of an apartment building — not charming — in a cold and small room and probably paying too much for the privilege. Definitely paying too much, according to her more sophisticated artist friend, Minna. As Lili, Minna and her boyfriend, Nick, gravitate around each other, the world with all its thorny issues circles them. The newspapers are full of the Yorkshire Ripper case and the police are out on the streets, picking up illegal migrants from North Africa. When the police raid their neighbourhood, Lili is always asked for her ID, while Minna never is. Privilege comes in a fair-skinned box. Lili, an Asian Australian, is used to feeling othered, but you get the distinct impression she hoped to escape some of this prejudice by being among like-minded travellers. Despite being part of a diverse, freewheeling and optimistic group of young people, it’s Lili who is grappling with, and noticing, overt and covert racism, dealing with her creepy downstairs neighbour and sexist behaviour from her wider social group. Aiming for sophistication — she wants to be a modern-day Simone de Beauvoir — but falling for Minna and Nick can only lead to disorientation. This abruptly ends when Minna takes off. There are all sorts of little power plays here, as well as the charge for a bright new future. Lili and her friends celebrate the election of France’s first socialist president. Hope is in the air, but on the street does anything change?
And then switch to Lyle. Lyle’s a middle-aged Melburnian who works in Evaluations at the Department of Security. He lives in the outer outer suburb on Spumante Court with his ambitious corporate wife, Chanel, and his ageing mother, Ivy (who migrated from Sri Lanka when Lyle was a child). They have two adult children: Sydney — who has almost finished his PhD but he’s gone off-grid and is proving a disappointment — and Mel, who’s moved to London to study architecture (an expensive exercise for her parents) but whose ultimate focus is her social media profile. They’ve all survived the Pandemic and the others that followed, and are fortunate — though not as wealthy as some of their fellow corporate Australians — to live in an air-conditioned house out of the fire zones. In other words, this is good for those that can but crap for those who can’t, and ultimately horrendous. As are this family. While Lyle and Chanel spend all their time being as Australian as possible and then more so, Ivy is delving back into her past. Chanel’s pumping for the new apartment and Lyle is torn between the easy life of agreeing and his care for his ageing mother, complex feelings that are foreign to him. Add to this the need to keep yourself as neutral as possible and avoid suspicion from either the securities services or from his wife, you have the distinct impression that Lyle is walking on hot bricks. Navigating this dog-eat-dog world which hates migrants and offers no empathy, Lyle is starting to crack. But can a man with so many layers of veneer crack at all or is he lost to himself? 
De Krester’s playful and intelligent novel pitches you in and throws you out — it’s both absorbing and startling in structure — and will leave you to ask and answer the question: Who are the scary monsters? The prejudices that bind us to a situation? Or us, humans, ourselves? You choose.
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Other reviews:
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. * The Observer *
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 *
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. -- Sam Leith * Telegraph *
Scary Monsters is a provocative and exhilarating game of snakes and ladders * Times Literary Supplement *
Engrossing...a powerful portrait of feeling adrift in a hostile environment, suffused with stabs of beautiful description * The Times *
truly great...brilliant -- Ali Smith * The Guardian *
Ruminative and sly rather than preachy, this novel about complacency and compromise packs a stealthy bite -- Laura Miller * Slate, 10 Best Books of 2022 *
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 to now. 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
I read Scary Monsters months ago and can't stop thinking about it. This is a bold, unsettling and beautifully written book. -- Emily St. John Mandel
De Kretser is a wonderful writer...Though her skewering satire is pointed and painful, her gallows humor keeps the reader smiling. -- Claire Messud * Harper's *
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 Come deserves 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 *
De Kretser clearly relishes demonstrating how close we are to this dystopian future where "government hatespokespersons" dominate the media and a "climate no-policy" has already wreaked havoc. What lingers in the mind, however, are the connections she makes between past prejudices and a future society devoid of values or compassion. * Financial Times *

Author Biography: 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.