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| MPH Books 2017 Mellville House Paperback now released 27 July 2017 |
What's it all about..
Somewhere on the South African veldt, 1901: At the height of the Boer War, a doctor at a British concentration camp conducts a series of grim experiments on Boer prisoners. His work ends in chaos, but two children survive: a boy named Benjamin, and a girl named Tessa.
One hundred years later, a disgraced young police constable is reassigned to the sleepy South African town of Unie, where she makes a terrifying discovery: the body of a young woman, burned beyond recognition.
The crime soon leads her into her country's violent past a past that includes her father, a high-ranking police official under the apartheid regime, and the children left behind in that long ago concentration camp.
What did I think about it..
The novel opens in 2010 where we
meet one of our protagonists. Alet is a young police officer who has been sent
to the small South African town of Unie following a professional misdemeanour.
Suspicious of a woman police officer the locals don't take kindly to Alet and
she faces small town prejudice which hampers her investigation into the death
of a young woman.
Travelling back in time to the
early 1900s, we meet Tessa Morgan who senses that she is different but who
lives a fairly sheltered existence with her father Andrew Morgan who was once a
soldier caught up in the Boer War conflict.
On the surface neither of these
stories should have any real connection but gradually as the jigsaw puzzle
starts to slot together, we begin to understand the links between a modern day South
African police officer and a series of uncomfortable experiments which happened
over a hundred years ago during the Boer War.
Initially, I found the novel difficult
to get into until I had found some emotional connection to the characters which
took a little while to sit easy with me. However, by about a third of the way
into the story I found that the finer points of the plot became easier to follow.
In many ways this is a slow burner of a story and one which requires concentration and an ability to just go along with the story wherever it leads.
The author writes well and
explains the South African history and landscape as only a true South African can.
Combining dark historical fiction with a chilling modern day murder mystery is an inspired
idea which, in The Monster’s Daughter, comes together in a shattering conclusion.
About the Author
Michelle Pretorius was born and raised in South Africa. She received an MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago and is currently a PhD candidate at Ohio University. She has written for a number of publications, including Bookslut, Word Riot, and the Copperfield Review. She is a recipient of the John Schultz and Betty Shiflett prize and lives in Athens,
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