Book Alert / Monster, 1959

Monster. 1959 -- A Novel by David Maine, St. Martin's Press '08, $23.95, 245 pages, ISBN #0312373015.

In this hypersensitive age, it's reasonable to ask whether, in watching horror films, you ever sympathized with Godzilla. Oh please, no paroxysms of guilt -- I was just asking. Why?, you ask. Well, a novelist named David Maine has found a way back for you -- he tells Godzilla's story from the creature's point of view.  Feel better? I thought so.

In Monster, 1959, Maine (who wasn't even born then) imagines "an island where the U.S. government has been testing the long-term effects of high-level radiation. Among them: killer plants, mole people, and a 40-foot creature named K. Covered in fur and feathers, with unusable insect wings and antennae, and the mental capacity of a goldfish, K. is not an evolutionary masterpiece. He's Darwin's worst nightmare."