Even with the benefit of the past, we are wading knee deep through our present. We embrace the new normal, but as we do, it’s already ageing, nearly passe. Where does our gaze rest and why? What are we admiring? Is the future a distraction from our past or the present a distraction from our future? These are the questions which bubbled to the surface during and after reading Michelle de Krester’s, wonderful mind-stretching and form-warping novel, Scary Monsters. With Halloween approaching, I thought now was the time to bring it up. What we scare ourselves with might serve to distract us from what is truly frightening.
Scary Monsters has the feel of an adult choose-your-own-adventure story. Flip the book over to its traditional back cover blurb and ubiquitous B&W photo of author, and you’ll find another front cover. It’s kind of delightful, until you realise there’s some personal leadership required. Then, it’s almost shocking that we get to choose what we read first: Lili’s 1980’s coming of age story filled with equal measures of fear and hope or Lyle’s near future dystopian story. How weighty is this decision? Having chosen Lili’s story as my starting point, will my impression of the book be different than if I had started with Lyle’s? I think yes. Lili’s story will flavour Lyle’s, and should you buck chronology and choose Lyle’s story first, I suspect it will foreshadow Lili’s. It’s impossible to say, of course. One can’t redo a first reading. De Krester does nothing by accident, I am sure. We can’t redo history either. It’s impossible to wipe the slate clean. All I can do is give you my impressions as a Lili starter and not a Lyle.
Lili
Lili is in Paris, awaiting her acceptance into post-graduate studies at Oxford University. An Australian of Asian descent, she is no stranger to racism. She watches as North African immigrants are rounded up by French police and removed from the city. Of this she says:
I began to see why they put such effort into looking respectable. The French can overlook a whole heap of things if you’ve taken trouble with your shoes.
She hears news of the frightening doings of the Yorkshire Ripper and she is at the crux of political and social change in Paris where fascism and socialism vie for control.
That was what the world looked like when I was twenty-two. We chanted, “They shall not pass!” and believed that the monster had been put to rout.
We cringe with her as she runs the gauntlet past her creepy neighbour’s door. It’s beautifully, authentically done. There’s wide-eyed fear at the complexity of the world, but there’s also Lili moving on toward her own future and that there might be answers still. Will it be as she imagines? Will the rugby pile-on of a messy world make way for her?
Lyle
Then there’s Lyle. He’s an Asian immigrant living in Melbourne, in a post-pandemic, post-humanitarian Australia, where Islam has been out-lawed, as has any mention of the dead Great Barrier Reef. In a dark twist, Lyle works for a government department responsible for vetting his fellow immigrants. Only his mother, Ivy, is a constant reminder of his past.
There’s no joining past to present — I saw that then. My old, whole self was gone for good. Immigration breaks people. We try to reconstitute ourselves in our new countries, but pieces of us have disappeared.
It’s heart-wrenching, but he has little choice. His wife, Chanel, toes the line to the letter and drags Lyle along with her.
We renovate a bathroom every seven years, and the kitchen every ten. The expense is essential. Household debt and home improvements are key Australian values.
It’s satire at its finest. Lyle’s story is depressingly near, while Lili’s is tilting into a murky future. We can’t afford to be complacent. And so it goes, that while De Krester’s characters turn their backs on their pasts and are creatures of the present, her innovative form reminds readers that in the reading, we cannot escape it either. Lili first or Lyle. It makes a difference. And what of the future? 😬 Left to our own devices…it doesn’t look good because we are the scary monsters.