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.

I was looing forward to reading this because I don't know enough about Malaysia's history, but I found it slow going. I didn't really warm to any of the characters and at the end so many character relationships were left unresolved.

I was excited to read this book from both it’s cover and description, but disappointed that I just couldn’t engage with it.

The start of the book is filled with a sense of foreboding, mystery and hidden secrets as Durga returns to Malaysia to visit her grandmother and revisits her past and stories of her grandmothers past to fill in the gaps in her understanding of her identity.

I haven’t read much on the history of Malaysia, and it was interesting to be given a little insight into this and the changing generations.

Catherine Menon conveys pain, suffering, and sadness effectively, but I really struggled to connect with her characters on a personal or emotional level. There weren’t any likeable characters, and the men particularly were portrayed as being selfish, manipulative and deceitful.

Durga and her grandmother (her Ammuma) are the main protagonists, and neither are likeable or relatable. Even Durga, who’s perspective the novel is written from, is disconnected from the reader as there are stories and storytellers within stories, including unreliable narration.

I also found that there were a lot of unnecessary, unresolved or unexplored themes. There were constant references to Durga’s mathematical brain, that would suggest a need for structure and resolve but I didn’t find her personality consistent with that.

Disappointingly, whilst feeling there was potential here...I was left feeling a little cold and confused after reading this novel. However I would like to thank netgalley for providing me with this eARC in exchange for my honest review and feedback.

This book had so much potential, looking at WW2 in a whole new light.
For the first 20% I felt lost, like the book had no substance and was just words that didn't say anything to me. There was very little plot for me to grip on to.
When the Peony storyline came in, that was really engaging and I started to understand the characters and their relationships to each other.
I felt like the actual plot took too long to get going but definitely improves the further you read and I enjoyed the later parts much more.

“Perhaps that’s what I’ve come back to learn; the ghosts in Malaysia are for good. They’re fragile monsters, these nothings of ours.”

The year is 1985. Durga Panikkar – a lecturer in mathematics – has been living and working in Canada. As the book starts she has returned to her native Malaysia to the house of her grandmother Mary who raised Durga after her mother died in childbirth.

Grandmother Mary still lives in the house in which Durga grew up, in a village a couple of hours drive away from KL.

“The house still feels familiar and strange at once. My childhood home, but I can’t quite manage to be sentimental about it. It’s the wrong sort of home, or perhaps I was the wrong sort of child.”

It is Diwali. An accident with some fireworks sparks off (sorry) a train of events but also a train of memory which leads back to events of World War II and the period known as ‘The Emergency’ immediately after the War when the British tried to stop Malaya gaining independence, while a conflicting number of resistance groups seemed determined that it should.

The action slips back and forth between Durga’s contemporary life, her attempts to rekindle a relationship, and her Grandmother Mary’s childhood, teenhood, the birth of her own daughter Francesca and efforts to survive the war and Japanese occupation.

A couple of strange finds in an unvisited corner of the house precipitate a need in Durga to find out about her mother Francesca – who had died or so Durga had always been told ...

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This book is written in both the present day and the past and the main character is Durga, who has returned to live in Malaysia with her Grandmother having lived in Canada for several years.

I was looking forward to reading this book, as I am very fond of Malaysia, but it just didn’t grip me like I was hoping.

Although the concept of the book is lovely, I think it’s more focused on the lives of the Characters, rather than a Historical fiction, but perhaps I misinterpreted what I was expecting from the book.

The writing is done well, the detail is great and the characters established. It just wasn’t really the book for me.

Fragile Monsters is a very skilful exploration of the nature of a granddaughter – grandmother relationship. I was immediately gripped by the rich narrative and the vivid descriptions of the places where the drama unfolds. This is a very self-assured debut novel.

Central to this book is the relationship between Durga and her intractable grandmother, Mary. Durga has returned to Malaysia, from Canada, to spend Diwali with Mary. We soon learn that Mary and Durga are haunted by tragedies in their past but it is the secret of Francesca, Mary’s daughter and Durga’s mother, that remains the central mystery. The narrative spans a timeline from the 1920s to 1985, with periods in between. These transitions are deftly achieved and there was no sense of disjointedness or confusion.

Mary is an enigmatic character. She is grumpy, judgemental and incorrigible. Her recollection of the past is unreliable and inconsistent. Despite her faults you can’t help but like her and as her story unfolds, admire her. Durga is a little more straightforward, although she has her own dark and impulsive side. She is endlessly frustrated by her unpredictable grandmother. The dynamic between them is beautifully developed. This is a journey through the lives of two women set against the backdrop of Malaysian history, culture and natural disasters.

The themes, which are so delicately woven together, are those of love, loss, guilt, jealousy and the repetitious nature of history. You see many parallels in the lives of Mary and her best friend Cecelia with those of Durga and her friend Peony. Time may move on but the challenges remain the same.

This is a great novel, brilliantly observed and wonderfully written. I recommend it very highly.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Hamish Hamilton for an ARC in return for an honest review.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Menon has written a deliciously dark, twisty and engaging tale of family secrets and how stories are never quite what they seem. It also covers a period of history that I know very little about, so it was fascinating to learn more about Malaysia's twentieth century ups and downs. No character is likeable but all are understandable, and the narrative feels realistic whilst also being full of mystery and magic. If you're thinking about asking for some family history at Christmas, maybe you don't want the truth!

This is an incredibly accomplished debut - I was enthralled from start to finish!

This story includes everything I love in fiction, descriptive language, beautiful settings, well drawn characters and an exploration of different cultures to my own. This story spans generations and is dual narrated by Durga and her grandmother Mary. I loved the mix of the three generations!

I can't wait to read more from the author and I highly recommend this wonderful debut.

Durga returns to Malaysia to visit her grandmother Mary. They have a difficult relationship, both of them having past traumas they'd rather not acknowledge. However, when new information comes to light, will Durga be relieved or left even further devastated?

This was definitely a book of two halves for me. The first half I was confused and really couldn't see what direction this was heading in. However, the second half was brilliant as Mary and Durga's stories started to be revealed and how they overlapped.

I definitely felt for both women, although, both were quite difficult characters. Some of the stuff they went through was genuinely heartbreaking.

It was also great to read a story from a completely different culture, it was definitely insightful! I would love to read more from this author in the future.

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin for providing me with a copy to review.

This is a tale of family lives across the generations, how people melded together with their community and what memories and tales were passed on. Durga, recently having started work as a Professor at Kuala Lumpur University after a decade in Canada, returns to the old and deteriorating family home and her aging grandmother (Ammuma) for the Divali celebrations. This is a traumatic return for her – not helped by meeting an old friend Tom who had left the area 15 years previously after an accident in which a joint friend of both had drowned when their car crashed. A memory that had haunted her even before her return.
But without acting as a spoiler it is enough to say that through this novel the life story of Ammuma – Mary – will be revealed, and that of her parents, brother and daughter who was Durga’s mother. She coming from a culture of secrecy melded with female modesty, has, it appears been keeping quiet about key happenings in the past and been severely “economical with the truth” about more. Mary’s father was a white planter her mother of Tamil descent. The marriage is not happy and destroys the well being of both – this played out with lack of stability for Mary and her early and unsupportable marriage. Her marriage and birth of her daughter is cut across by war (the Japanese invasion), then by the years when Malaysia moved towards Independence and the rebuilding of a new political and economical reality. So this novel will take many readers to a previously unknown and foreign place and time making for a fascinating journey. As the details and difficulties of these lives – and the real physical impacts - become more apparent to Durga they are revealed to the reader too.
Many of these themes are universal of course and so will be interesting to any engaged reader. But this novel brings out – in great visual but complex physical detail – rural life in Malaysia through the 20th century, regardless of peace, war, independence struggles, and movement to more modern ways of life. We see the plants, wildlife, environment and especially the impact of the weather. Using this place as a backdrop – and speaking with the voices of the women - it shows the complexities and challenges of mixed race families especially with the additional challenges of immigration, change of family traditions and the need to integrate safely within a native population. But the most significant storyline is living within multi generational families where (even with hidden secrets); character, beliefs and habits of life seemingly can play out across the generations for better or worse. One has to live with what has been given or can be achieved.

I found the writing style quite difficult- but that was probably as it was written in local dialect. I did enjoy the story and liked the characters

A family saga and a grandmother-granddaughter testy relationship, set in Malaysia and spanning from the 1920s to the 1980s.
What is real and what is made up, this is Durga's dilemma amongst half-truths and secrets - on her way to find out what really happened to her mother.
I loved the setting and the descriptions of the small town and the family home, together with the narration of Mary's younger days.
Altogether pleasant read but a bit muddled in parts.

🌿BOOK REVIEW🌿

Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon

🌼🌼🌼/5

Durga returns to Malaysia after spending 10 years in Canada to visit her grandmother, Mary, for Diwali. She would never expect the memories that would resurface on that visit, after a firework display causes a fire in the house.

Mary and Durga are both fierce women who, like everyone, have their flaws. They have an extremely complex relationship that is mostly centred around the absence of Durga’s mother (Mary’s daughter). The story is told in a dual narrative, one following the present day (set in 1985) and the second explores Mary’s life. The narrative surrounding Mary’s life is really interesting as it starts in the 1920’s and explores her childhood life, through to WW2, the Emergency and Malaysia’s fight for independence.

The writing in this book has so beautiful and skilful. There were Fragile Monsters featured throughout the story, both in memories and fables. Menon created such an atmospheric novel that even after breaks from reading, I was transported back into the story.

My only issue was that I sometimes got confused with the writing style and so the stories became slightly disjointed. This made the complexity of the book unclear and towards the end I was struggling to follow the story.

I received an e-ARC custody of Viking in exchange for an honest review.

This is a story of generations of Malay family and the echoes of the past that keep repeating themselves between parents, grandparents and friends. The history of this family is told from the 1920s to present day and incidentally some of the history of Malay - occupied by the British and then invaded by the Japanese during the Second World War and then re-occupied by the British until independence was fought and won. This narrative was educating and shocking, having the occupation and the treatment by both British and Japanese .described from the native point of view.
The family stories were reminiscent of Salman Rushdie, in that they felt like tales - "skins are like stories, what matters is what's underneath" - for example with the two girls, Mary and Cecilia, somehow linked in their sympathetic physical reactions to the others bodily pain etc. The descriptions of the river area around Kuala Lipis were vivid and brought the fetid swampy surroundings that were tempermental and disregarding of human life to the imagination.
The fragile monsters of the title are the ghosts of the past which can't be laid to rest but are flimsy and nebulous.
A modern fable that engrosses and enlightens.

'Fragile Monsters' is a puzzling book. About a third of the way in, I was still wondering what point it was trying to make. I was confused about the characters, both past and present. I wasn't hooked at all. It just seemed to be rambling around. By the half-way mark, it had perked up a bit, and the final 20% had me waking up early to make sure I could finish it before the working day started. So I'd say 2 stars for the first half, but 4 stars if you stick around for the second.

It's an interesting premise of multiple dislocations. Nobody seems to 'fit' in this book. Going back to the great-grandparents, we have a white British doctor taking an Indian-born wife in Malaya. We have an odd mix of Christian (Stephen, Mary, Luke et al) and Hindu names (Radhika, Durga) all in the same family. The 'box room' of Durga's aunt contains Christmas decorations whilst another room is set aside for her Hindu gods. There's so much fusion in this book that it's hard to grasp anything firmly. I particularly liked the mute nun who ties the two halves of the story together.

I recently reviewed a book about the Indian diaspora in Uganda but this book was a first for me for offering Indians in Malaya/Malaysia. It's not a time and place I've found in fiction before.

The book is full of flawed women who fall in love with the wrong people and horrible men who sleep with pretty much anybody who crosses their path and some who just evaporate into the jungle, never to be seen again. After reading a book set in India a few days ago where somebody couldn't get married because the bride wasn't of precisely the right caste and community, there was something quite refreshing about seeing all the rules relaxed (or downright ignored) in Malaya.

The two main protagonists are Mary, the elderly grandmother, born in Malaya to a British father and an Indian mother, and her granddaughter, Durga, newly returned from working in Canada, leaving behind an ex-lover who had neglected to mention his wife. Durga is a mathematician, a woman who wants to explain the world through equations but is tormented by things that happened in her childhood. Friends drowned. Friends were disgraced. Tom, the doctor-lawyer, is still hanging around to remind her of the past and potentially be part of the present. I can't say I understood him at all.

The author has chosen to set the book with a 'present' time of the mid-1980s. I always like a book that doesn't rely on mobile phones and Google so I appreciated that. The timing is cleverly chosen to allow Mary to have been born between the wars and to open up the opportunity to raise issues around the 'between the wars' Independence movement, the occupation of Malaya by the Japanese during WW2, and the eventual independence of the newly re-named Malaysia. After the author so carefully set up the timing, it was a shame that a lot more wasn't made of the historic events.

The star of this book is the small town Malaysian setting. Everything is damp and decaying, or about to burst into flames. There's a river that will rise without warning and swallow up all it passes, Banyan tree roots lay ready to trip the unwitting, and durian fruits drop with dangerous (and smelly) consequences. I just needed a few giant monitor lizards and some snakes and I was there, surrounded by the lush fecundity of a tropical location.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this before publication.

Good book once you get to grips with the various names for everyone. Was slightly confused for the first few chapters especially as it time hops but the story is good and the characters are wonderful