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Fragile Monsters

Fragile Monsters

Author(s): Catherine Menon

Location(s): Malaysia (Malaya)

Genre(s): Fiction

Era(s): 1920 to present

Location

Content

Mary is a difficult grandmother for Durga to love. She is sharp-tongued and ferocious, with more demons than there are lines on her palms. When Durga visits her in rural Malaysia, she only wants to endure Mary, and the dark memories home brings, for as long as it takes to escape.

But a reckoning is coming. Stuck together in the rising heat, both women must untangle the truth from the myth of their family’s past. What happened to Durga’s mother after she gave birth? Why did so many of their family members disappear during the war? And who is to blame for the childhood tragedy that haunts her to this day?

In her stunning debut novel Catherine Menon traces one family’s story from 1920 to the present, unravelling a thrilling tale of love, betrayal and redemption against the backdrop of natural disasters and fallen empires. Written in vivid technicolour, with an electric daughter-grandmother relationship at its heart, Fragile Monsters explores what happens when secrets fester through the generations.

As they will learn, in a place ravaged by floods, it is only a matter of time before the bones of the past emerge.

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Book Reviews

Lead Review

Author: Tina Hartas

3.5* The storylines in Fragile Monsters pivot on the tense relationship between Durga and her grandmother Mary who brought her up after her mother died. Durga is an Indian-Malaysian mathematics lecturer newly returned from...

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