Monstress

( 1 )

All Available Formats + Editions

——

$9.99

NOOK Book

——

$9.99

Monstress (eBook) Pub. Date: 1/31/2012 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
$2.36

$12.71

Paperback

$2.36

$12.71

Monstress (Original) Pub. Date: 1/31/2012 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Customers Who Bought This Also Bought

Advertising

Overview

Monstress introduces a bold new writer who explores the clash and meld of disparate cultures. In the National Magazine Award-nominated title story, a has-been movie director and his reluctant leading lady travel from Manila to Hollywood for one last chance at stardom, unaware of what they truly stand to lose. In "Felix Starro," a famous Filipino faith healer and his grandson conduct an illicit business in San Francisco, though each has his own plans for their earnings. And after the Beatles reject an invitation from Imelda Marcos for a Royal Command Performance, an aging bachelor attempts to defend her honor by recruiting his three nephews to attack the group at the Manila International Airport in "Help."

Lysley Tenorio reveals the lives of people on the outside looking in with rare skill, humor, and deep understanding, in stories framed by tense, fascinating dichotomies—tenderness and power, the fantastical and the realistic, the familiar and the strange. Breathtakingly original, Monstress marks the arrival of a singular new voice in American fiction.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

In an interview, Lysley Tenorio describes himself as "a plot-driven guy," whose stories often come to him from weird bits of news or history. In Monstress, his first collection, his adventurous ventures take his characters to Hollywood for a last grasp at stardom; to San Francisco for illegal business success; and to the Manila Airport for an attack on the John, Paul, Ringo, and George. Innovative; risky; worthwhile.

Andrew Haig Martin

Tenorio's first collection of stories takes a refreshingly off-kilter approach to the lives of Filipinos in America…Tenorio's prose isn't flashy, but his stories are impeccably constructed, leading us calmly but insistently through the characters' external and internal landscapes.
—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780062059567
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 1/31/2012
Edition description: Original
Pages: 240
Sales rank: 204,465
Product dimensions: 5.30 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 0.80 (d)

Meet the Author

Lysley Tenorio

Lysley Tenorio's stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Manoa, and The Best New American Voices and The Pushcart Prize anthologies. A winner of the Whiting Writer's Award and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has received fellowships from the University of Wisconsin, Phillips Exeter Academy, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in the Philippines, he currently lives in San Francisco and is an associate professor at Saint Mary's College of California.

Interviews & Essays

The stories in your collection are wildly different in terms of setting, plot, and character. You write about a young woman with leprosy falling in love with an AWOL soldier in "The View From Culion," a group of teen-agers attacking the Beatles in "Help," two filmmakers, one from America and one from the Philippines, team up to create a sci-fi/ horror movie. How do you get your ideas for your stories, and what would you say they have in common with one another?
With a few exceptions, most of my stories are based on real places or events. Culion was an American-run leper colony in the South China Sea, the Beatles really were attacked at the Manila International Airport, and the movie the characters make in "Monstress" is based on an actual film that consists of an awful American sci-flick spliced together with footage from a Filipino caveman-monster movie. These scenarios are full of thematic possibility, at least in terms of what I'm interested in writing about—identity, dislocation, home, etc.—but perhaps more importantly, there's so much weirdness to those circumstances; they're almost unbelievable. I like the challenge of that, finding the real emotional drama in the seemingly ridiculous, nonsensical, and strange. These strange places and events from the real world, from history, present me with that challenge.

Your stories have been described as "[illustrating] the clash and meld of Filipino and American cultures." What does this idea of "clash and meld" mean to you and for your stories?
Besides sounding like a new dance craze ("Everybody clash and meld!"), the phrase "clash and meld" feels like an accurate way to describe any two cultures that have been as historically intertwined and American and the Philippines. There's obviously conflict and tension between both cultures, but there's also harmony and synthesis—my characters, I like to think, embody those complexities. The young narrator of "Superassassin," for example, is the son of a white U.S. navyman and a Filipina woman. He demonizes his father (he ditched them right before the narrator was born), is unflinchingly loyal to his abusive mother, and contemplates "the potency of [his] hybridity"—he believes the combination of traits from both parents is its own kind of superpower, something different and uncategorizeable. He's that clash-and-meld, incarnate.

Publishers Weekly, in a review of your book, said, "The tales are tragic, but Tenorio makes the most of his gift for black humor." Do you see your stories are tragic? And if so, how do you infuse emotionally dark stories with a sense of humor?
I can see how these stories can be read as tragic; for all they stand to gain from the decisions they make, my characters suffer immeasurable loss. If there's humor to be found in these stories, its presence should be organic; the job is to draw out the humor, so that it textures and complicates the emotional truth of each situation.

How exactly do you pronounce "Lysley?" Where does your name come from?
It's pronounced, "Less-lee." "Leslie," like the Naked Gun's Leslie Nielsen, also works; "Lies-lee" or "Lis-lee," does not.

The story goes that my oldest brother named me, and came up with the spelling, but there was a brief moment when my father considered naming me "Lindon," which was inspired by "Lindol" which is the Tagalog word for earthquake (I was born during one).

Besides literary fiction, what are some other things that have inspired your writing?

Here's a partial list:

1. Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary. My favorite book as a kid. Even then I understood how flawed Ramona's character was, but that I was still on her side. I think that kind of empathy is essential if you want to write fiction.

2. Crisis On Infinite Earths, the seminal DC Comics mini-series. DC put this out in 1985, and it was the company's way of streamlining their chronology. In the process, major characters were killed off—Supergirl in one issue, The Flash in the next. These were characters I'd loved since I was three years old. I remember sitting in a Pizza Hut, mourning, and feeling like the world had changed with their passing. I would never say my characters have this effect on any potential reader, but that doesn't mean I don't try.

3. Room in New York by Edward Hopper. Through a window, you see a man reading a newspaper and a woman in a red-orange dress plunking away at a piano with one finger. Those single gestures, the blurred faces, the colors that are bright and dull at once—there's so much complicated life in that image, that single moment in time. Fiction should work that way too.

4. Minute 1:58 from "Top of the World" by The Carpenters. I grew up listening to them, and this song is unabashedly cheery and optimistic. But the brilliance of their music is, of course, the synthesis of Richard's buoyant arrangements and the beautiful sadness of Karen's voice. If you listen to that song, to that line where Karen sings, "When this day is through I hope that I will find/ that tomorrow will be/ just the same for you and me," she sings the word same (at 1:58) with this quiet desperation and sense of longing. Many of the stories in Monstress are trying to hit that note—against these seemingly whimsical and offbeat backdrops are characters desperate to make their way in the world. That's what Karen Carpenter's voice sounds like to me.

Who have you discovered lately?

I'm a big Ishiguro fan, but only recently read his first book, A Pale View of Hills. Even in this early work, he shows how powerful restraint can be, all that seethes quietly beneath the self-protection of decorum. Recently, I read The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt. It's a wild and utterly unique riff on the western genre, hilarious and unexpectedly moving.

As Monstress is my first book, I'm compelled to mention three amazing writers who are currently working on theirs. One is Jack Livings, whose stories have appeared in The Paris Review, A Public Space, Best American Short Stories, and The Pushcart Prize. Another is Otis Haschemeyer, who's had work in The Missouri Review, The Sun, and Best New American Voices. Finally, there's Serena Crawford, already an NEA recipient, whose novel, This Side of the World, I read in manuscript form—it's beautiful and sharp, so quietly sad. I can't wait for their books to come out, and for readers to discover them.

Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4

( 1 )

Rating Distribution

5 Star

(0)

4 Star

(1)

3 Star

(0)

2 Star

(0)

1 Star

(0)

Your Rating:

Review Guidelines

Tell the world what you think of this product.

Add Recommendations

Your Name: Create a Pen Name or Leave Anonymously

Barnes & Noble.com Review Rules

Our reader reviews allow you to share your comments on titles you liked, or didn't, with others. By submitting an online review, you are representing to Barnes & Noble.com that all information contained in your review is original and accurate in all respects, and that the submission of such content by you and the posting of such content by Barnes & Noble.com does not and will not violate the rights of any third party. Please follow the rules below to help ensure that your review can be posted.

Reviews by Our Customers Under the Age of 13

We highly value and respect everyone's opinion concerning the titles we offer. However, we cannot allow persons under the age of 13 to have accounts at BN.com or to post customer reviews. Please see our Terms of Use for more details.

What to exclude from your review:

Please do not write about reviews, commentary, or information posted on the product page. If you see any errors in the information on the product page, please send us an email.

Reviews should not contain any of the following:

- HTML tags, profanity, obscenities, vulgarities, or comments that defame anyone
- Time-sensitive information such as tour dates, signings, lectures, etc.
- Single-word reviews. Other people will read your review to discover why you liked or didn't like the title. Be descriptive.
- Comments focusing on the author or that may ruin the ending for others
- Phone numbers, addresses, URLs
- Pricing and availability information or alternative ordering information
- Advertisements or commercial solicitation

Reminder:

- By submitting a review, you grant to Barnes & Noble.com and its sublicensees the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right and license to use the review in accordance with the Barnes & Noble.com Terms of Use.
- Barnes & Noble.com reserves the right not to post any review -- particularly those that do not follow the terms and conditions of these Rules. Barnes & Noble.com also reserves the right to remove any review at any time without notice.
- See Terms of Use for other conditions and disclaimers.

Anonymous

Posted May 8, 2012

No text was provided for this review.

If you find inappropriate content, please report it to Barnes & Noble