Scary Monsters is the sixth novel by award-winning Australian author, Michelle de Kretser. In the early nineteen-eighties, Lili is teaching in Montpellier, mixing with British and German ex-pats, occupying the attic of a cold eighteenth-century building, avoiding a creepy downstairs neighbour and watching North African men being harassed by gendarmes.

Minna, an English artist, is her closest friend among the ex-pats, and devoted to her uglification of fashion project; together they travel to Sardinia to see John Berger’s mistress, a fruitless but still interesting excursion. Against a background of reports of the Yorkshire Ripper, Lili is determined to be Bold, Sexy, Modern and Intelligent, striding out alone, despite her fear, to return home from weekly cinema outings.

Decades after immigrating to Melbourne from an unnamed Asian country, Lyle works for the Department, where he strives to be nondescript and indispensable, staying under the radar. In what many would call a police state, Australia tolerates no criticism of its climate no-policy and its solution to the grey tsunami and housing crisis, has banned Islam, and enforces a policy of repatriation of migrants who draw the wrong sort of attention to themselves.

“Our prime minister is a strategic genius. Since seventy-five per cent of the population have a grandparent born overseas, his repatriation policy had an immediate effect on dissent.”

Lyle and Chanel are consumed with appearing to be real Australians, rejecting any hint of their ethnicity and sparing no expense to achieve the right veneer. This is a costly exercise to finance and, to this end, Chanel’s pragmatism concerning her mother-in-law’s fate is chilling; Lyle’s tacit acquiescence to it, unnerving.

The reversible presentation, two novellas each with their own cover, allows the reader to choose which to read first, past or future. The scary monsters of racism, misogyny and ageism are deftly portrayed.

De Kretser easily evokes her era and setting for Lili’s story, while her depiction of the near future Australia Lyle inhabits is disturbingly believable. When Lyle says that “The whole point of Australia is a bet on the future” many will hear the echo of a certain present-day politician. Never one to write a comfortable read, De Kretser’s latest offering is powerful and thought-provoking.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by Allen & Unwin.