MONSTERS

Robertson, David A. MONSTERS. Highwater, 2018.

Five years ago I read the first of this Reckoner Trilogy series, STRANGERS. I'm watching for the third and final. 

I've also read Robertson's graphic novel, BETTY: The Helen Betty Osborne Story, and his children's book, WHEN WE WERE ALONE.

I know Robertson is a great writer and an interesting man. Also, that his father was from Norway House and head of BUNTEP, the Brandon University Northern Teacher Education? Program, established in the 1970s to train local people to teach in reserve schools. An especially successful program. Thus, my main interest in Robertson's work is because it is often set in Norway House, or on a reserve very like Norway House, with character names using many local family names. Such a bonus for students in the north looking in vain to see themselves and their neighbours represented.

In this YA novel, MONSTERS, the protagonist, Cole Harper, has returned from 
"exile" in Winnipeg to the reserve to find out details about his father's mysterious death. Cole suffers from anxiety and takes medication for it. Reading about his anxiety created feelings of anxiety in me. Convincing. Characters include best friends Brady and Eva, Eva's boyfriend Michael, and Cole's new possible, Pam. A main character is the all-powerful imaginary Choch who sometimes manifests as a basketball coach, and Jayne, a dead girl. The bad guys are local politicians and unscrupulous corporations performing unauthorized experiments on the residents of the Wounded Sky Reserve.

So, there's fantasy and a bit, a fair bit of horror, along with more familiar themes of an outsider trying to connect, an adolescent trying to hook up, and a natural northern setting which is perceived as both nurturing and threatening.