Book Review: "Broken Monsters" by Lauren Beukes

I am one of those people that enjoys going through Reddit Forums. I like to look at books in particular to find out what kind of books people recommend for horror reading. Yes, we have the normal ones like “The Shining” by Stephen King, “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson and “House of Leaves” by Mark Z Danielewski - but I like to explore ones that maybe we haven’t been subjected to by the mainstream bestsellers of the genre. When I explore deeper into these types of books, I am stunned to find more obscure books, some of which I have gladly never heard of. Reddit has offered me a space to see what others have been reading, what they have thought of the books - and as the discussion replies are normally long and detailed - a short summary of what the book is about as well. This is where I found a book called “Broken Monsters” by Lauren Beukes. The person in question (whom I will not address by any name) called it “truly disturbing” without actually saying what it was really about. I had my theories when I found the book but a lot of my theories were just straight up wrong.

Gabi is an officer in the force and she is put on a case in which someone has been brutally murdered. But, it is not just any someone - this ‘someone’ is a child. The first chapter covers the child’s death and it details something really quite horrific. The top half of the child apparently looks like it is sleeping with no major trauma at all. Whereas the bottom half of the child is not only horribly maimed, but it is a deer. Someone has chopped the boy in half and sewn the bottom half of a deer on to him in attempt to make a hybrid - a ‘broken monster’. But is this really what the term ‘broken monster’ is referring to. Gabi tries to find the how, who and why to this as she makes a special point of tracking down the killer before this happens again.

Written with a brilliant sense of the post-modern, this book covers days as long chapters, moving back and forth into sections entitled “Before” and “After”. The disturbing nature of the book is not only seen through the way in which it graphically describes the murder of the child and the child being sewn on to a deer. It actually goes a lot further than that when we get into the book. The various ideas explored include things like: mental illness, sociopathy, murder, child abuse and more. I would recommend that if you don’t like reading about harm coming to a child that you stay away from this book. Though it is well-written, the amount of mind-searching this book does when it comes to the killer is intense and can get to the point where you have to set the book down for a while. I know that I had to set it down, especially halfway through. I was a bit exasperated.

In conclusion, though I was reading this over the course of a few days because I could not possibly read that book in one sitting (because of its intensity), I would really recommend this book to people who do not have a problem reading about the things I briefly discussed in the ‘ideas’ sentence. I would though, say that you take your time with this one, don’t try to read it in one sitting because you will either lose the plot or scare yourself to death.