Monsters and others

Olivia Cole

‘Make somebody up’ was the instruction to the 23 contributors to Zadie Smith’s short-story anthology The Book of Other People, published to benefit the Brooklyn children’s writing charity, 826 NYC, founded by Dave Eggers. While that might seem about as radical a command as telling screenwriters to use dialogue, the only rule being that each story should take its title from the central character, none reads as though pinched and twisted to fit the theme. That said, of course, there are those that feel they must wriggle in the opposite direction. ‘Monster’, by Toby Litt, threatens for a moment to become some sort of Bildungsroman for monsters: ‘One day, the monster set off to…’ before it remembers itself. ‘There was to be no quest for true identity. The monster had no story, unless being a monster is story enough.’