Monster

by Adam Lowe

Ides is a monster. She's got half a face, half a life and half a conscience. Once she was rich, glamorous, successful. Everything the public should want from a celebrity. But like all the best icons, Ides found fame was destructive. Now she's a fallen idol lurking in the sewers. A vigilante whose mask is permanent.

But Ides also has vision. Whether in the mirror or standing in front of her, she knows darkness when she sees it. And so Ides fights for the society that has left her behind. Perhaps to make herself worthy. Perhaps because there's nothing else to do.

In this novella, Adam Lowe introduces us to his anti-hero Monster, former cover girl turned vigilante. This is a powerful exploration of celebrity, power, freedom and the role of the hero in Western culture.

37 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 17, 2013

About the author

Adam Lowe (he/his, mostly) is a writer, performer and publisher from Leeds, UK, though he currently lives in Manchester. He is the UK's LGBT+ History Month Poet Laureate and was Yorkshire's Poet for 2012 . He writes poetry, plays and fiction, and he occasionally performs in drag as Beyonce Holes. He is of Kittitian, British and Irish descent. He graduated with both a BA and MA from the University of Leeds, and is currently researching for a PhD in creative writing at the University of Manchester.
Adam Lowe writes about disability, LGBT+ experiences, and the lives of mixed-race Black British communities. Carol Rumens of The Guardian describes him as a 'versatile and widely published young writer'.

With afshan d'souza lodhi, Adam founded and runs Young Enigma, a writer development project for young writers; is Editor-in-Chief of Vada Magazine and Dog Horn Publishing; and is Publicity Officer for Peepal Tree Press. He has performed around the world, at festivals and conferences, including the Black and Asian Writers Conference. He is an advocate for LGBT+ rights and sits on the management committee for Schools OUT UK, the charity that founded LGBT History Month in the UK. He is chair of Black Gold Arts, which supports artists who are queer, trans and intersex people of colour (QTIPOC) in Greater Manchester.

In 2013, he was announced as one of 10 Black and Asian 'advanced poets' for The Complete Works II (founded by Bernardine Evaristo) with Mona Arshi, Jay Bernard, Kayo Chingoni, Rishi Dastidar, Edward Doegar, Inua Ellams, Sarah Howe, Eileen Pun and Warsan Shire, which resulted in the anthology Ten: The New Wave, edited by Karen McCarthy-Woolf (Bloodaxe). He was mentored on the programme by Patience Agbabi. He also made the list of '20 under 40' writers in Leeds for the LS13 Awards, where Lowe was given as an example of 'the non-conformist and boundary-breaking approach to writing in Leeds'.

In 2022, Adam edited the anthology The World Reimagined, featuring 30 poets writing on the subject of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Poets in the anthology included Benjamin Zephaniah, Keisha Thompson, Malika Booker, Dorothea Smartt, Nick Makoha, Tanya Shirley, Khadijah Ibrahiim, Shivanee Ramlochan and Shara McCallum.

Adam is also an alumnus of the Obsidian Foundation, and has taught for The Poetry School, PEN, the University of Leeds and the University of Central Lancashire.

Reviews

[Wendy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Welcome to a world of intriguing and multi-dimensional adversaries, for whom you might just shed a tear, when they fall. Welcome to the blood-drenched, bone-splintering bestiary that is, Adam Lowe’s, “Monster.”
For this, make no mistake, is a morality tale as much as it is a cybernetic faerie tale. The beasts within will tear out your heart for more than one good reason. The characters are captivating and compelling. There even lurks an evil mastermind within these pages – in addition to Lowe himself.
A poignant vein of compassion pulses steadily throughout this work. “In the mirror I can hardly see myself. It’s as if I’m a haunting. Bits of me have faded away.”
Whilst revelling in Monster’s triumphs, the reader is forced to acknowledge the intrinsic worth of even the most radically altered life-forms. “Then I pause: a mark of respect for my fallen adversary. For all intents and purposes, he was an innocent. A lab experiment turned loose and left to run wild. Society made him a monster. I can relate to that.”
Lowe’s writing is anatomic and grisly and ultimately, a hugely satisfying feast – after the initial nausea has been long since forgotten - “Trailing nerves and cracked bone meet cold concrete and I scream.”
Look, it’s right there in black and white, in the book itself - “Monster never fucks about.”

[J. Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam Lowe invokes Beowulf in his new book, Monster, and he has certainly written himself that right. This is fiction dressed in the finest epic poetry this side of the Green Knight. This is Grendel drawing urban apocalyptic blood and conjuring Ralph Bakshi visions. It shivered me a bit to see that this kind of literary audacity still exists.
The potion Monster brews is archetypal: What happens when Beauty becomes Beast, when Frankenstein makes the world his monster? As her battle begins with the Beowulf, Monster says, “This beast towers above me. Its muscles are artists’ nudes strewn around its body.”
That is a perfect description of the book. I highly recommend this beast’s embrace.


—J. Michael Shell, author of The Apprentice Journals