Loving Monsters

by James Hamilton-Paterson

A chance encounter in a local store leads a biographer to record the life of his enigmatic neighbor. From the terrace of a Tuscan villa comes the story of a tantalizing journey, leading the reader from the gas-lit streets of prewar London to Egypt in the months before World War II. Loving Monsters is a provocative novel from the winner of the 1991 Whitbread First Novel Award for Gerontius.

Genres: Fiction

308 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2001

About the author

James Hamilton-Paterson is a British poet, novelist, and one of the most private literary figures of his generation. Educated at Exeter College, Oxford, he began his career as a journalist before emerging as a novelist with a distinctive lyrical style. He gained early recognition for Gerontius, a Whitbread Award-winning novel, and went on to write Ghosts of Manila and America’s Boy, incisive works reflecting his deep engagement with the Philippines. His interests range widely, from history and science to aviation, as seen in Seven-Tenths and Empire of the Clouds. He also received praise for his darkly comic Gerald Samper trilogy. Hamilton-Paterson divides his time between Austria, Italy, and the Philippines and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2023.

Reviews

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book twice, I bought a copy, so you can guess that I like this book but in fact that barely scratches the surface. This book is wonderful, it is about as perfect a reading experience as I can imagine. Mr. Hamilton-Patterson is an immensely talented writer - he has written the only worthwhile biography of Ferdinand Marcos (goggle it if the name means nothing).

I am not going to say to much about the storyline of this novel, and it is a novel, I am sure I am not the only reader who was confused about the reality of some of the more wonderfully bizarre characters (I hope it won't spoil anyone's pleasure too much to learn in advance that brilliant Austrian anthropologist and his collection of ethnographic pornography is fictional) but then there is so much in the book that is true. Not just the anecdotes of war time Cairo but the wonderfully imagined boyhood in pre war London of the books main character. Mr. P-H is a writer who despite his determination to reveal nothing about himself allows the reader to feel that he is in fact discovering the 'real' H-P in the writings, that unintentionally or subliminally something only a perceptive and dedicated reader has been placed there to be divined.

Of course I don't know if H-P has really revealed himself, but it is the strength and beauty of his writing and storytelling that makes you feel he has.

It is one of the finest and most remarkable books I have read in a long time. I will return to it again. I hope many more people will discover this remarkable writer and book.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the richest, most intellectually playful and most moving novels I've read in years. Now that Hamilton-Paterson has had some success with the charming, but minor, Cooking with Fernet Branca, it would be good to see his earlier work made more readily available.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so beautiful that I can't wait to check out more by James Hamilton-Paterson. I'm not the only one - that was the gist of the review excerpt from The Spectator.

[Juud10 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ik ben op bladzijde 30 maar dit boek gaat het niet worden. De 'tongue & cheek' pakt me niet. Nuffige, barokke taal. Ik heb destijds ontzettend genoten van 'Cooking with Fernet Branca'. Helaas lijkt dat het enige boek van James Hamilton -Paterson te worden dat ik met plezier heb gelezen. Bij alle andere boeken haak ik vroegtijdig af. Ook bij dit boek.

[Philipc · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Loving Monsters" is fiction in the form of a biography - which seems to have confused several reviewers. Possibly at the root of the fiction is the fact that the author appears in it as a character - the real James H-P is also the fictional James-the-writer who serves as a major element in the story. That and the photos. Pity some of them couldn't be published. (Or so we're told in a footnote - one never knows quite what's fiction and what's not).

Italy also appears as a character, as does war-time Egypt and there's a walk-on part for Southeast Asia. (You think that's whimsical? Places should always be characters when they appear in books).

The plot - well, there's hardly any plot. It's the story of Raymond Jerningham-Jebb as narrated to James Hamilton-Paterson, with additional material by the author. In other words, JJ provides incident, James gives commentary and rumination. Personally I found JJ quite an engaging character, far more so then JHP, whose life doesn't appear to have been anywhere near as interesting - but then, it's hard to compete with a man who laid the foundation of his fortune by cornering the filthy postcard market in 1930s Suez. From there it was but a short step to merchant banking, the Queen Mother, and Baroness Thatcher. But as JHP says in one of his somewhat wet-blanketish asides, no story can be built on mere incident. Well, he's wrong there of course, a great many are - take Dean Koontz - but no interesting, engaging, absorbing story that makes you want to just sit quietly and think for half an hour after you finish it. Which is how I felt on reaching the last pages of Monsters.

JHP - the real one - has also written a series of three comic novels arranged around the person of Gerald Samper. The first and last are works of genius. Read them after, not before, Monsters.

[Michael Aitken · Rating 5 out of 5]

More serious than the comedies. Very good.

The emotional 'key' to JayJay is interesting - a device for creating suspense.

Made me think of a number of other books with a mystery in the back-story, which is eventually revealed... and whether the mystery is sufficient to drive the plot. Other examples
- the scene in Kite Runner where the narrator betrays his friend... was it such a big betrayal?
- another example is the Reader (Schlink), where I found it hard to believe that the woman would get herself into so much trouble simply to avoic conceding that she was unable to read...
One hidden event that works very well was the 'crime' in Ian McEwan's Atonement

[Sebadiaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting literary device, telling a novel through a fictional biography where the writer is as much a character as the subject of the biography. This permitted the author to jump around in time and location rather effectively. Ironically it was the whole section of JayJay's past that I found really boring (all the underage sex, which I thought was purposefully introduced to spice of these sections, did not really shock, nor interest me; even if I did find it a bit distasteful, though not out of character for the time and place). There is no tension there as you know he survives and characters are introduced but you never get attached to them, so those whole sections only serves to highlight the interactions in the present time. That is where the book is at it's peak with very wry and interesting back and forth between two smart insightful characters.

[Donovan Lessard · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are a lot of great things about this book: a deliciously queer lens, a historical sensibility, and a narrative strength. In other words, the main character, Jayjay, embodies a quirky, playful challenge to the early 20th century cultural norms, the story moves from pre World War II England (the least interesting part of the book) to back room bars and illegal pornography rings in Suez and Cairo and orgies on a Nile Houseboat to air raids in Alexandria. The snapshots of the underground economies of pornography and drugs in Egypt in pre-war time, as well as the queer parties and spaces, are really captivating. There is a voyeuristic pleasure in reading this--which is not ironically a major theme in this book. Jayjay claims to be first and foremost an imposter, someone who can slip into the skin and language of someone else. This is another major theme in this book--the relationship between what is concealed and what is not, what is affected and the 'real', and the what we reveal to others and do not. The themes are carried through and appear in clever ways and the pacing is especially well done in this regard.

Where the book fails is two-fold: in the narrating character (not the main character) and the writing. The worst parts of the book are those where the narrating character veers from the story of Jayjay to focus on his own life. This narrator's life and story are totally inconsequential to the book. These parts drag horribly. And the writing reaches its most irritating heights in these parts. The language is sometimes so tortured and overdone that I found myself putting the book down many times. The tone is so self-conscious and smug that you REALLY learn to hate the narrator, and possibly the writer himself. While there are definitely some great quotes and gems in this book, they happen when the writer isn't trying as hard as he seems to be for the majority of the book. This is why I gave this book 3 stars.