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A review by samwitches
My Name is Monster by Katie Hale
5.0
An atmospheric dystopian tale about motherhood, and the costs that come with it. My Name is Monster tells a story of planet earth’s sole survivor after some unknown source of Sickness left her in total isolation—or so she thinks. Monster, the name pressed onto her before civilisation’s collapse, had always struggled to fit in with other people and she often kept her distance from emotional connection.
Once this might have been a weakness, but as the world crumbles around her, Monster’s aversion to others is the very thing that keeps her alive. Perhaps on the outside, at least. She does almost anything that she can to stay alive, including indifference to the death of those who were most close to her. Monster is utterly isolated, in pain, starving, and constantly on the move to survive as we as readers follow her on her journey and intermittently are given glimpses into her past.
Until she finds someone. A girl—younger than her. And she is no longer a Monster, but now a mother. As the story twists it soon evolves from isolation and survival into motherhood, love, and instinct. My Name is Monster describes an uncomfortable and desperate insight into motherhood, but one that is absolutely necessary and will definitely make your heart ache.
I have said it and I’ll say it again: get this book. I found it a little slow at the start, but once I laid back and became acclimatised with the languid rhythm of Hale’s writing the whole narrative experience became almost poetic. The story is delivered through two perspectives and certain chunks of information were often left out because of this, in another book this might have been frustrating. But if I’m honest, I thought that the omissions made the narratives even better because what we aren’t told simply reflects in the uncertainty of the characters themselves. My Name is Monster is a tale of tenderness, of life, and survival in an utterly decimated world. The prose is specked with thought-provoking lines on femininity, power, and fertility throughout and it really is utterly beautiful.
Once this might have been a weakness, but as the world crumbles around her, Monster’s aversion to others is the very thing that keeps her alive. Perhaps on the outside, at least. She does almost anything that she can to stay alive, including indifference to the death of those who were most close to her. Monster is utterly isolated, in pain, starving, and constantly on the move to survive as we as readers follow her on her journey and intermittently are given glimpses into her past.
Until she finds someone. A girl—younger than her. And she is no longer a Monster, but now a mother. As the story twists it soon evolves from isolation and survival into motherhood, love, and instinct. My Name is Monster describes an uncomfortable and desperate insight into motherhood, but one that is absolutely necessary and will definitely make your heart ache.
I have said it and I’ll say it again: get this book. I found it a little slow at the start, but once I laid back and became acclimatised with the languid rhythm of Hale’s writing the whole narrative experience became almost poetic. The story is delivered through two perspectives and certain chunks of information were often left out because of this, in another book this might have been frustrating. But if I’m honest, I thought that the omissions made the narratives even better because what we aren’t told simply reflects in the uncertainty of the characters themselves. My Name is Monster is a tale of tenderness, of life, and survival in an utterly decimated world. The prose is specked with thought-provoking lines on femininity, power, and fertility throughout and it really is utterly beautiful.