The Monster, by Ali Simpson
Read it here in 10 minutes.
Thinking about why I love it…
The first sentence hooked me – ‘LAURA WAS BECOMING UNSURE ABOUT WHAT TO DO with the monster in her closet’ – firstly, I’m intrigued by the idea of an actual monster being in a closet, rather than the monster being just a childish fear; secondly, the notion of Laura being ‘unsure about what to do’ is interesting, because I assumed (wrongly!), thanks to all previous monster literature, that a monster is something requiring immediate removal due to the danger; thirdly, a monster in the closet is a horror cliché for children, yet, we’re told in the second sentence that Laura isn’t a child.
The description of the monster is lovely, and telling: he is ‘the cutest little nightmare she had ever seen, far more benign than her own nightmares’ – a mixture of unpleasant characteristics (‘hairless’, ‘scabs’, ‘sharp teeth’) and positive ones (‘lithe’, ‘dexterous’). The monster, initially, is a contradiction in terms – he makes Laura feel better, after the loss of her dog and boyfriend; he impresses her friends by making cosmopolitans and playing games of Pictionary with them; he, apparently, fixes her – this is unexpected, for a monster, because my expectations of a monster are that it wants to eat people.
I enjoyed the ending of the story – the monster, which obviously had to symbolise something, seemingly represents Laura’s increasing insanity. It’s understandable; Laura is perhaps typical of a young woman (or a not-so-young woman!) in today’s world – going working just to afford food and a place to live, yet feeling lonely, in a messed up world where lots of bad things keep happening. I hope Laura found something better, in the tunnels.
Mina Ma 