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We expect to have good mothers, and to marry, and to be good mothers. The arrival of baby Violet was meant to be the happiest day of my life. I would be different. I would be like other women for whom it all came so easily. I would be everything my own mother was not.
But as soon as I held her in my arms I knew something wasn t right. My husband Fox says I m imagining it. He tells me I m nothing like my own mother, and that Violet is the sweetest child. But she s different with me. Something feels very wrong. Is she the monster? Or am I?
The best (and worst) novels of 2021 so far
In this regularly updated guide, our critics review the best of the year s fiction – and suggest a few books to avoid
Eight of the best: this year s top novels
The Start-Up Wife by Tahmima Anam ★★★☆☆
Tahmima Anam is best known as the award-winning writer of three novels (A Golden Age, The Good Muslim and The Bones of Grace), and less well-known as the executive director of a music technology startup called ROLI. An experience no doubt plumbed for her latest book, The Startup Wife, a tech industry-set reverse romcom in which a young Bangladeshi-American woman creates a social media network that gets out of control.
Fragments of Riversong (Daily Star Books, 2013), and Saad Z Hussain, author of
Djinn City (Bengal Lights Books, 2018) and
The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday (Bengal Lights Books, 2019), as well as Mumbai-based journalist Jane Borges, Catherine Menon, author of
Fragile Monsters (Viking 2021), and Sabyn Javeri, author of
Hijabistan (Harper Collins 2019), among others. The masterclasses and sessions will cover everything from writing inspiration to practicing craft to research to publication , Farah Ghuznavi told
The Daily Star. I am not part of the selection process but I can definitely say that the successful applicant will need to have an originality of voice that can absorb the reader completely , she added.
Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon review â a Malaysian family firework
A woman visits her grandmother and confronts the countryâs violent past in Menonâs bravura debut novel
Diwali celebrations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Photograph: Annice Lyn/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
Diwali celebrations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Photograph: Annice Lyn/SOPA Images/REX/Shutterstock
DaisyHildyard
Fri 23 Apr 2021 02.30 EDT
Last modified on Fri 23 Apr 2021 02.31 EDT
Fragile Monsters, the debut novel from short-story writer Catherine Menon, begins with a family reckoning and a house fire. Durga, a thirtysomething maths lecturer, has recently moved from Ontario, where she has lived since she was an undergraduate, to Kuala Lumpur. Durga grew up in Malaysia but her new life is lonely. The only surviving member of her immediate family is her