RaveThe Financial Times (UK)Each [story] is a perplexing little jolt that leaves one wondering if there really is anything that makes us better than the creatures we keep ... every scant word is precise and brutal ... This sense of metamorphosis, combined with the fact that no technology is mentioned throughout, gives her stories a timeless, fable-esque quality ... These stories often end abruptly, before you can fully understand what is going on, and do not offer satisfying endings. Traditionally, a fable would deliver a moral, but no lesson is forthcoming here ... enigmatic, unsettling and tinged with body horror; funny, cruel and minutely repulsive in places. But they are also cinematic, with strange images that are as ephemeral as they are memorable ... This is a brilliant, unsettling collection of quick, sharp and searing stories that asks the reader how humane humanity actually is — a particularly apt question in our newly strange world.
Charlie Fox
PositiveThe Financial TimesIn these nine essays, Charlie Fox uses his fearsome knowledge of popular culture to paint portraits of notable artistic outsiders ... Fox celebrates the ugly, the weird and the transgressive ... Surreal and provocative, This Young Monster is both a poignant portrayal of life on the margins, and a joyful salute to a group of people who embraced their misfit status to lead beautifully unconventional lives.
David Bellos
RaveThe Financial Times[Bellos] goes beyond the statistics to argue persuasively that in terms of impact and influence, Victor Hugo’s masterpiece was the novel of the 19th century ... in telling the engrossing story of the book and its author’s journey from staunch defender of the government to exile in Guernsey after Napoleon III’s 1851 coup d’état, Bellos also makes a powerful case for the novel’s enduring relevance.
