Title: Monster Love
Author: Carol Topolski
Publisher: Penguin
$35.00
If you only buy one book this year, make sure it is Monster Love by Carol Topolski. I know for many of you spending $35 on a book will necessitate living off baked beans for a fortnight to afford it, but it will be well worth the culinary suicide…and the complaints from your flatmates about your flatulence.
I’m being facetious, but this book is anything but. It is a dark, horrifyingly twisted tale of two people, Sherilyn and Brendan, so fiercely in love that they will let nothing stand in the way of their happiness and will destroy anything that threatens them – even their own child.
The book is told chapter by chapter from different characters associated with Sherilyn and Brendan and each, while progressing the storyline from the moment the crime is discovered until their incarceration, are also grappling with the enormity of the crime committed and the questions that go with it; how could someone, especially parents, do this to a child? How did no one notice what was going on? How could they justify their actions as being acceptable?
Monster Love, because of its subject matter of all consuming love and child abuse, is not an easy read but it is a thoroughly mesmerising one. Beautifully written in clear concise language, debut author Topolski captures the individual voices of each of her many characters and make them all come across uniquely on the page. The near cosmic connection between the two protagonists is particularly chillingly written.
Definitely my favourite read so far in 2008.
First published in Nexus Magazine, Issue 8, 12 May 2008. Reproduced with kind permission.
I’m being facetious, but this book is anything but. It is a dark, horrifyingly twisted tale of two people, Sherilyn and Brendan, so fiercely in love that they will let nothing stand in the way of their happiness and will destroy anything that threatens them – even their own child.
The book is told chapter by chapter from different characters associated with Sherilyn and Brendan and each, while progressing the storyline from the moment the crime is discovered until their incarceration, are also grappling with the enormity of the crime committed and the questions that go with it; how could someone, especially parents, do this to a child? How did no one notice what was going on? How could they justify their actions as being acceptable?
Monster Love, because of its subject matter of all consuming love and child abuse, is not an easy read but it is a thoroughly mesmerising one. Beautifully written in clear concise language, debut author Topolski captures the individual voices of each of her many characters and make them all come across uniquely on the page. The near cosmic connection between the two protagonists is particularly chillingly written.
Definitely my favourite read so far in 2008.
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First published in Nexus Magazine, Issue 8, 12 May 2008. Reproduced with kind permission.
2 comments:
Miss K, completely unrelated matter, but have you heard of the goodness that is http://www.librarything.com? I think I will have to sit down and do this soon...though it would be much harder for you lol.
I think I would like to read Monster love but i dont know if I should. But you make it sound so good.
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