I’d like to take a moment to thank the publisher and netgalley for an arc in exchange of an honest review.

I was excited when I started this to read more about Malaysia and the culture. Everything feels so real and heavy and lived in. 

Unfortunately for me it also fell flat. While the writing is beautiful it can also be hard to follow. Cultural references are not difficult to understand at all, but the movement in time periods can be disjointed and hard to follow. The plot flits between different character heads mid chapter which I didn’t like.

This novel follows Durga and her grandmother Mary, as Durga returns to Malaysia from living in Canada for 10 years. In some ways this novel felt like my life. I too studied abroad in Canada and my grandma is a big part of my life. However maybe personal circumstances made this too difficult for me right now but the entire novel I bogged down with depressing feelings. There did not seem to be anything redeeming.

The foreigner who may have caused the death of her best friend (or maybe Durga did), the injury of her grandmother, the questions about her mother, her alcoholic great grandmother, Durga’s boyfriend going back to his wife. Everything felt like too much sadness for me. While real life is sad it felt like there was nothing redeeming and likeable about anything in the novel. 

I guess is you like being sad it will work for you?

It is a debut novel. A novel that has the reader gripped from the start. It rambles a bit in the middle and could be 50 pages shorter, but is a homecoming story about a Doctor of Mathematics in Malaysia 
visiting her elderly grandmother and reminiscing about the past.

Catherine Menon's debut novel 'Fragile Monsters' is split distinctly between opposing forces of storytelling - retelling a story truthfully, or retelling it right.

Two very complex women, Durga and her cranky and critical grandmother, Mary make up the timelines as they spiral like a helix between WW2 and modern-day Malaysia. 

The story starts with a disagreement when Durga comes home to celebrate Diwali, pride puckers and leads to a crackling fire. Her and her grandmother always seem at odds, Durga is continually frustrated with Mary seemingly disappointed at every turn. 

Mary's childhood, retold by Durga, is built from snippets of fairytales but also the steady logic of theory. As her story emerges, through the Japanese occupation and the Emergency, Durga starts to understand why Mary contorted and embellished every story she ever told. Sometimes, the reality is too painful, too shameful to admit outright. The power of words rules in this place of rumours and gossip and Mary learns to wield her words at a young age, using them to manipulate and scheme. As a grandmother, Mary uses her stories to remould her past into something more like the fairytales she loved as a child. Likewise, reality becomes folklore and fancy, gruesome events transformed into ghoulish lessons. 

"Stories twist through the past like hair in a plait. Each strand different, weaving its own  pattern and ducking out of sight just when you're following"

The banyan swamp, the Jelai river and the surrounding forest are teemingly alive and full of ghosts. The landscape is mythic, at once a playground and a war-zone and yet creatures in their own right. I loved the language used, dangerous and gripping. The poetic turns of phrases for their descriptions, as well as those for loneliness and guilt, were beautiful and haunting. 

Both women are the unfortunate subjects of unrequited love, repeatedly in the position of second-choice. Mary wins her husband Rajan spinning lies and rumours, whereas Durga fools herself into feeling treasured by her childhood friend, Tom. This love and the trauma of loss wind together for both women as Mary's and Durga's stories manage to mirror each other's across the generations.

I enjoyed this novel immensely and would compare it to a Malaysian The Henna Artist, with one foot in the past. The flashbacks to Mary's childhood are a little jarring at first, as Durga maintains a narrator's hold over most of it. Once I understood that Menon was spinning a story of family folklore, rumour and retellings I was gripped. In alignment with these ideas, the historical elements of the war and the Emergency (where the British detained whole villages in camps of barbed wire and mud) are put on the back-burner. There aren't details, only enough context and atmosphere to build how it would feel to live through it and how the trauma can be suppressed, with time. 

Intergenerational stories hold a lot of weight for me, I love seeing reflections of experience and the ongoing struggles of being female. All the women in the novel our powerless to men and are unable to withstand their power or alluring charms. Equally, the men use their power freely, turning to servant girls to soothe their guilt in the past and present. I love a tale that has characters that blur lines of good and bad and are ultimately simply symptoms of their brutal environment.

I felt that much of this novel was quite dark. Most of the narration comes through either grandmother Mary or granddaughter Durga. The book is set in the last 100 years or so in Malaysia and tells stories from all the different generations about their lives there.

The reason I felt is was so dark was that something pretty bad happens to the friends of all the generations. As the book progresses you get a deeper feeling that none of the accounts describing these events are totally reliable, so I felt an unease, as I couldn't feel confident that the accidents were just accidents and that other events were as described.

That said, I enjoyed the relationship between Durga and Mary, specifically how Durga gets drawn back into Mary's life and feels compelled to try to get to the bottom of the facts behind the stories particularly for things pertaining to her.

Fragile Monsters is a story that takes us to Malaysia. Durga has returned to her homeland and is visiting her grandmother Mary, who is a formidable character. Durga is to discover that it is not only her who is haunted by ghosts from the past, and she is to learn that the stories she has been told, are far from the truth. Moving from 1922 to 1985, each chapter reveals a little more of the rich and tragic history of her family, and whilst some questions are answered, the ending is left purposefully ambiguous.

The story immerses you which is a reflection of the brilliant writing in this debut novel which puts women at the centre of Malaysia's history.

This is a striking, assured and original first novel, a testament to the ties that bind and the stories we tell to make sense of our past and come to terms with it.

30-year-old Durga, a mathematics professor, returns home to a university post Malaysia after ten years in Canada, escaping from a failed affair with a married colleague. Visiting her contrary grandmother Mary for Diwali, with the ever-present threat of floods lapping at the gates of Mary's ramshackle house, she is brought face to face with the ghosts of her past in a tale of mothers and daughters, complicated friendships and relationships, mirrored across generations. 

As a mathematician Durga believes in logic and proofs, in truth and clean narratives, but she is about to discover that in Malaysia, with its troubled history of Japanese invasion, British rule, communist guerilla resistance and burgeoning independence, there is no such thing as a clear narrative when it comes to one's ancestors. 'Stories twist through the past like hair in a plait. Each strand different, weaving its own pattern and ducking out of sight just when you're following it.' The fragile monsters of the title are all the dead women, both the ones close to the Panikkar family and more generally, all the myriads who have been lost to war brutality, hunger, displacement, floods and drownings, madness and malice. 

As Durga tries to untangle the various strands of her family's past through her own incomplete knowledge, speculation, snippets of gossip and the unreliable stories told by her increasingly confused grandmother, I was afforded a fascinating glimpse into a history and a culture heavily coloured by its recent troubled past and very different from the Western world I know. As a migrant myself, living in the UK but from a small Mediterranean island , I know something about the way cultures clash and how history leaves its mark, how you can never fully escape however far you try to run. Catherine Menon's gift lies in the way she brings this alive for her readers in a story that is as elliptical, and as compulsive, as those told by Mary.

I enjoyed Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon. Its set in Malaysia and is a sweeping tale of female relationships and the secrets we keep. I found the writing very descriptive and the characters were full bodied and realistic. We make so many judgements on people without knowing the lives they've lived or what has brought them to make the choices they have and this book really showed how secrets and judgements can warp not only the present but the future too. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a meaningful read.

My thanks to Penguin Random House U.K. /Viking an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Fragile Monsters’ by Catherine Menon in exchange for an honest review.

Set in Malaysia Catherine Menon’s debut follows one family's story from the 1920s through to the present day. 

There is no doubt that this novel is beautifully written, and is especially rich in description. Unfortunately, I just failed to make any connection to its characters and was confused by the story.

I came to the conclusion that it was just not a novel that spoke to me

I was sent a copy of Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon to read and review by NetGalley.  I found this to be an exceptional book.  It was infused with feeling, with memories, ghosts and cultural differences.  The writing was beautiful, with chapters moving between protagonist Durga and the life and memories of her grandmother Mary.  Durga’s chapters were written in the first person, which I felt gave a good insight into her nature and feelings whilst separating the modern day from the past.  The Second World War and the Emergency in Malaya following it was woven throughout but treated with a light touch with the emphasis always being with the characters and their relationships.  The evocative prose meant that the country we now know as Malaysia was as integral a part of this novel as the characters themselves.  A must read, well worth the 5 stars I have given it and more.

I started Catherine Menon’s debut novel “Fragile Monsters” in the old year and finished it on New Year’s Day 2021. I am still astonished that this is a debut, the writing is so exquisite, the story so full of imagination, the characters so complex and colorful.  I was completely captured by the narration that alternates between Mary’s voice, her recollection of her family secrets starting with her British father and Indian mother and their troubled lives, and that of her granddaughter Druga’s voice.  The book comes with a deserved quote from none lesser than Hilary Mantel who says “Takes an immediate grip on the reader’s imagination and doesn’t let go”. I underwrite this 100 %, it gripped me from the first page.  Set in Malaysia between the 1920 until the present, this could have been a historical novel except it isn’t at all.  The fragile monsters being unspoken  ghosts of the past that give this book an Asian magical realism touch, drifting  between  past reality, what might have been and  the current situation.  Druga is visiting her testy, sharp tongued, difficult grandmother Mary in her small home town in rural Malaysia after having lived in Canada for some time, now working as a mathematician at the university in Kuala Lumpur.  An accidental fire and Mary’s admission to the hospital is the beginning of the appearance of the “fragile monsters”, unspoken dark secrets every generation of this family seems to have suffered and is haunted by anew .  Druga’s own troubled life and her probing questions are answered by her grandmothers ever shifting recollections which often made me think of fairy tales. A great literary debut that I am positive will find many enchanted readers.

Beautifully written and totally absorbing, this family saga is a solid debut from Catherine Menon. It is strong on its rural Malaysian location and covers a period of Malaysian history I knew little about; The Emergency (following immediately after World War II and the Japanese occupation).

It's 1985 and Dr Durga Panikkar, a mathematics lecturer from KL, has joined her grandmother Mary at the family home in Pahang to celebrate Diwali. Although raised by her grandmother, Durga hasn't spent much time with Mary over the past 10 years, as she'd been studying and then working in Canada until recently. An accident with home-fireworks sees Mary admitted to hospital, and Durga wracked with guilt for her role in endangering the elderly woman's life. But after her initial assessment, it's not Mary's physical injuries that concern Durga the most; it's that Mary has been speaking about her daughter Francesca - Durga's mother - as if she is still alive. Durga knows for a fact that Francesca died 3 days after giving birth to her.

Over the week that follows, Durga looks after Mary and while she tries to come to terms with a tragedy in her own generation, the reader is taken back to almost the beginning of Mary's own story, where the parallels become obvious. It's a tale of drowned women, the left-behinds (women who slipped through the cracks), ghosts, an unofficial branch on the family tree and not just one, but two mutes (maybe 3!). Durga has always known that Mary is a storyteller, but she hadn't realised just how much of her own family history had been massaged into Mary's preferred shape.

This was a good read and I may have rated it higher, but there was just a bit too much going on. It took a long time to establish what the central mystery/secret was going to be out of a few strong contenders. Some story threads that showed promise kind of petered out to nothing. A tighter edit could have resolved these issues. What I really loved about the book was the atmosphere Menon created. Between the sprawling family home, the crocodile-infested river running beside it, the ghosts, a nun born with no tongue and the legend of the nearby sanatorium, it came across as quite a gothic tale - something I find irresistible!

I had heard some wonderful reviews about this book from a number of people I trust and subsequently was looking forward to diving in to this over the winter break. I spent some years living in Malaysia as a teen and was interested to see how the country was portrayed and if my experience would add anything to this. 

Unfortunately I struggled with Fragile Monsters from the beginning, I couldn't connect with any of the characters and found the time jumps/switching POVs confusing and this didn't not add to my ability to empathise or connect with anyone. The writing itself is beautifully crafted and I just wish the story and the pacing matched it.

Menon is definitely an author I will be keeping an eye out for in the future.

Sorry, but this book wasn’t for me.  I appreciate that it was beautifully written, but to be honest I didn’t understand it.  The more I read, the more confused I became.  I couldn’t connect with any of the characters, and there was nothing in the story that made me want to read more.

Fragile Monsters is a spellbinding novel of war and family betrayal set in Malaysia during the 1920s through to the present day and tells the story of what happens to us all when loss is unacknowledged, how the secrets of one generation become the traumas of the next and is loosely based on stories Menon's father told her as a youngster. The narrative follows Doctor Durga Panikkar, a mathematics professor of Indian and British descent, who has just begun teaching at Kuala Lumpur University after returning to her hometown of Pahang, Malaysia, to visit her inveterate grandmother (or Ammuma), Mary. Having spent a decade living in Canada she feels she should spend time with Mary, the only real support during her childhood years as well as her guardian, during Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, after her mother, Francesca, seemingly died during troublesome childbirth. Having indulged in the tradition of purchasing some cheap fireworks from Letchumani, a local washer-man, at the nearby market to watch and enjoy she decides to light one of the rockets but due to a mixture of poor quality and negligent handling, the explosive misfires and ends up setting Mary’s house alight with her trapped in the bedroom upstairs. 

A panic ensues but Mary manages to survive with minor injuries and is admitted to hospital. Durga feels conflicted about returning to KL to teach with her grandmother’s health in such a state and decides after much deliberation to stay and moves back into the home in which she had spent her formative years. She tries to rebuild her relationship with prickly, difficult Mary while caring for her but there's about to be a reckoning. And many lifelong secrets are about to be revealed - unravelling both of their lives whether they're ready for it or not. Will their relationship survive these explosive secrets? This is a compulsive and deeply compelling debut novel with a superb, engaging writing style and beautifully evoked depictions of time and the exotic place. It's richly-imagined, thought-provoking and subtle in its charm until everything turns on a dime. Exploring World War II, Indian Culture in Malaysia, British colonisation of Malaya until 1957 and the Malaysian fight for independence, alongside family issues, such as generational differences and changing attitudes, this is not only an enthralling story but it's laced with many true events and their impact on those living through those times. A powerful, exhilarating and quietly haunting historical novel. Highly recommended.

Dark, disturbing and devastatingly evocative, Fragile Monsters is a complex, multilayered novel that intrigues and provokes, shocks and baffles. It takes you to a place of long buried secrets, of demons, real and imagined, where myth segues into reality and truth struggles to be heard. 

Set in rural Malaysia, with a timespan stretching from pre-WW2 to 1985, it is the story of Mary and Durga, grandmother and granddaughter, who come together for the first time in ten years to celebrate the Indian festival of Diwali. 

Their relationship is tense, fraught with simmering resentments, but bound by duty. Durga has long left her roots behind, only recently returning to Malaysia after a decade studying and teaching in Canada. Mary, now in her eighties, lives alone in the house where she raised Durga; nursing her memories, trying to pick apart the truth from the fiction she has so assiduously spun. 

When Mary is hospitalised, following a minor house fire, Durga finally discovers the tragic truth about Francesca, the mother she never knew, and the harrowing events that scarred two generations of her family. With her grandmother permanently incapacitated, Durga is faced with two choices: she can either embrace the truth or turn her back on it. 

There is a lot to admire about this debut novel. The prose is beautifully lyrical, conjuring up vivid images of places and people. The historical references to colonial Malay, its wartime occupation and subsequent struggle for independence, are interesting and thought-provoking. And the premise of the narrative gives scope for compelling storytelling. 

For me, though, the constant jumping around in time, switching between voices, and blurring of myth and reality made it difficult to get a proper foothold on the story. This all made for frustrating reading, and I was tempted more than once to give up. But finish it, I did. And the ending did elevate it somewhat in my eyes. I just wish it had been a more enjoyable experience.

Really enjoyed this book and the parallels between the two main characters - the granddaughter's sense of duty and at the same time the wanting to break free, the grandmother's duty completed but at what cost? Also the historical context of the book that sett he scene for the emotions and the actions of the past really helped it al come alive and provided additional insight to a culture different to my own. Really enjoyed reading this book

An interesting read at an intellectual level. It was fascinating to read about a world very far away from me both in distance and customs. A good mix of traditions, geography and history that I really enjoyed exploring. But at an emotional level I couldn't connect with the characters and the story at all. Too much rumbling, life as fairy tales, unlikable characters all round ... it really, really didn't work for me. I am sadden by this as the narrative is very complex and layered. It packs so much heartbreak and intricate relationships, exposing a caste system that is not much talked about, but also the complexity of human nature that never stops surprising us.

This book is told in such a way that you cant be sure what is real and what isn't, when it happened or at a distance of years & that is what I struggled with. I enjoyed the book but finished it not really sure of what I'd read.

This is an intriguing book full of secrets and half-truths, so much is left unsaid between Durga and her grandmother Mary, as we gradually see more about their relationship and about the hardships of Mary's past in Malaysia before and after the Second World War.

Durga has lived in Canada and has returned to her home country. Visiting her grandmother Mary she prompts a crisis which takes up most of the book, as we see characters and stories emerge from the past and the present.

The book is told in such a way that you cant be sure what is real and what isn't, when it happened or at a distance of years. This is the strength of the book, in weaving together the importance of the stories to family and to others, seeing how people are bound to each other over time by their power.

Durga has returned to her grandmother's home to spend time with the matriarch of the family, and the only parent she has ever truly known, during Diwali. Over the course of the next few days, Durga begins to know her grandmother in a way she's never before and find out some family secrets long hidden.

This book just didn't do anything for me, and I was really hoping the end would give me some satisfaction and the answers I wanted. Unfortunately, it didn't and I'm not 100% sure what actually happened.

I was looking forward to the exploration of a grandmother/granddaughter relationship in this book, as I myself am very close to my gran, she's my favourite person in the world but this didn't deliver. There's doubt Durga loved her gran and her gra loved her but there was something so prickly between them that it mad any interaction uncomfortable.

The characters in this book aren't particularly likeable and they're not suppose to be liked in my opinion. There was some interesting historical flashbacks to do with Malaysia during the war and I found this interesting but again, there wasn't really enough of it.

Very little happened in this book as well until about 65% through, which is when we only start being fed the questions to the answers the story is hoping to deliver. But I didn't feel satisfied, and the book ultimately let me down a lot. A shame as I was hoping to love it.