Reviewer Christopher Willard: Chris is the author of the novel Garbage Head (Vehicule Press/Esplanade Books, 2005) and Sundre, (Vehicule Press/Esplanade, 2009). His fiction and poetry have also been published in Salon, Third Wednesday, Ranfurly Review, Ars Medica, Ukula, Coffee House Press, Broken Pencil, Sobriquet, and upcoming in the Broken Pencil Anthology titled Can't Lit. He currently lives in Calgary where he teaches at the Alberta College of Art + Design
Follow Here To Purchase The Love Monster
Author: Missy
Marston
Publisher: Esplanade Books
ISBN:
978-1-55065-326-7
Where the Wild Things Are/Were
The
Canadian writer Margaret Atwood once spoke at Oxford University where
she described the wendigo as a monster as having a heart of ice. Such
a phrase might also exemplify thirty-five year old Margaret H.
Atwood, the main character in Missy Marston’s The Love Monster.
Her icy heart pumps cold blood and her eyes are cold lenses
through which her reflection consists of jowls and crinkles, her
co-workers exist to receive her hatred, her office is a metaphor for
a litter box, her soon to be ex-husband is the same self-serving jerk
he always was, and her coffee cup, well, that’s best used for gin.
Margaret H. Atwood reflects that it’s, “Not: how does
anyone live through this or that? Just: how does anyone live? Why
bother?” The extra-terrestrial Leader who sneaks into her
room at night to observe her in another creepy version of the book
I’ll Love You Forever does not share her angst. He cares
deeply. He finds her exciting. He is dismayed by her lack
of positive purpose. He considers alien/human
options.
Underlying the surface plot is a subtle
scrutinization of our rhizomatic, ironic, counter-intuitive world in
which we are forced to continually negotiate the endless onslaughts
of influences and media. Our individuality of ‘one in a
million’ becomes meaningless in the world of billions where, as
Margaret H. Atwood muses, people die, “Millions and millions, year
after year.” She wants to kick in the screen of her
television to make it stop. Her attempted withdrawal is no
cure. Negotiation is a flaccid sedative. Marston presents
Atwood as a person who references cultural influences, because
they’re that deep, and also as a meta-critical dempster unable to
invest real meaning in anything. It is a
world-view-as-a-question that I see many contemporary authors taking
on in their novels, not as a theme but as a driving background force.
The mindset, at surface level in Atwood, worries the Leader.
And, quite frankly, I’m worried too. This summer
Battleship, the movie (seriously? a movie based on a game?) plays to
the masses, presenting another destroy all aliens plot and
simultaneously getting people to pay Hollywood for what could be
considered an hour and a half recruitment commercial for the US navy.
The absurdity of it all is mind-boggling. But unlike our
inability to do anything but watch and shake our heads, the alien
Leader has the power to enforce change.
The Love Monster
begins as Marston charges into this irrational world with echoes of
Arthur Miller’s buoyant and sharp observations and attitudes. By
the middle of the book we are reminded of Lisa Moore’s structural
chapter/character shifts in Alligator. By the end Marston
tones down the writing and settles into a sort of love conquers all
theme as Margaret H. Atwood happily assumes a neo-liberal normalcy
that I’d expect the alien Leader to find deeply troubling. He’s
probably blinded by love. The book is encapsulated quite well
by a famous quote of Rilke, “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives
are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once with
beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its
deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” And
so it is with Atwood as she discards her wild and cynical self and
gently embraces those around her. Perhaps this is what Margaret
H. Atwood really needed, a love, presented to her by an alien who
wished to remind Atwood of her primary magical power: her ability to
be human.