A cracklingly funny and poignant debut novel about the ways we love, even when we’re not at our best
Stacey Lane feels like a monster. Tommy DeMarco is one.
Since her husband died eight months ago, Stacey’s been a certified mess—a poet who can’t write anymore, a good mother who feels like she’s failing her kids. She’s been trying to redefine herself, to find new boundaries.
Tommy has no respect for boundaries. A surprisingly well-read, A-list Hollywood star, Tommy’s fallen in love with Stacey’s novel-in-verse—a feminist reimagining of Frankenstein, no less. His passion for the book, and eventually its author, will set their lives on a collision course. They’ll make a movie, make each other crazy, and make love—but only in secret. And all with a vodka—or wine, or scotch—in hand.
As Stacey travels between her humdrum life in the suburbs of Omaha and the glamorous but fleeting escape Tommy provides, what begins as a distracting affair starts to pick up weight. It’s a weight that unbalances Stacey’s already unsteady life but offers new depth to Tommy’s. About desire, love, grief, parenthood, sexual politics, and gender, Monsters: A Love Story is a witty portrait of a relationship gone off the rails, and two people that are made for each other—even if they’re not so sure they see it that way.
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“Monsters: A Love Story spins several tales at once—the numbing navigation of grief, the ambivalences of motherhood, and the seduction of a world that thrives on fantasy. Kay’s beautiful, spare prose lands us right in the heart of this complicated, wounded cast. But ultimately, this is a love story, how the meeting of kindred spirits is often as punishing as it is beguiling. When monsters fall in love, it is impossible not to watch, impossible to put the book down.”
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Rebecca Rotert, author of Last Night at the Blue Angel