Monstress - by Lysley Tenorio (Paperback)

About the Book

"Monstress" is a collection of heartbreaking, vivid, original stories set amongst the Filipino-American communities of California and the Philippines by a breathtaking new talent--a winner of a Pushcart Prize and a Whiting Writer's Award.

Book Synopsis

"The debut of an electric literary talent. Brilliantly quirky, often moving, always gorgeously told....Bravo for this fabulous American fiction!"
--Chang-Rae Lee, New York Times bestselling author of Native Speaker

"A wonderful story collection that's as wide and rich and complex as the geography it spans."
-- Ben Fountain, PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera

"Tenorio is a deep and original writer, and Monstress is simply a beautiful book."
--Jessica Hagedorn, author of Dogeaters

A luminous collection of heartbreaking, vivid, startling, and gloriously unique stories set amongst the Filipino-American communities of California and the Philippines, Monstress heralds the arrival of a breathtaking new talent on the literary scene: Lysley Tenorio. Already the worthy recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writer's Award, and a Stegner Fellowship, Tenorio brilliantly explores the need to find connections, the melancholy of isolation, and the sometimes suffocating ties of family in tales that range from a California army base to a steamy moviehouse in Manilla, to the dangerous false glitter of Hollywood.

From the Back Cover

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.

Review Quotes

"With Monstress, Lysley Tenorio gives us a wonderful story collection that's as wide and rich and complex as the geography it spans. Hard enough to make sense of life when you're rooted to one place, one culture; how much more impossible it must be for those many in our midst who straddle one place and another. Yet Tenorio is that rare breed of writer who mines gold from the impossible. He sees everything--the absurd and the tragic, the funny and profound--and delivers stories that are as true to life as any you will ever read." - Ben Fountain, PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH CHE GUEVARA
"Tenorio is that rare breed of writer who mines gold from the impossible. He sees everything--the absurd and the tragic, the funny and profound--and delivers stories that are as true to life as any you will ever read." - Ben Fountain, PEN/Hemingway award-winning author of BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH CHE GUEVARA
"Lysley Tenorio is a writer of sly wit and lively invention--these are stories bursting with wonders (from monster movies and leper colonies, to faith-healers and superheroes)--but most wondrous of all is his intimate sense of character. Each story is a confession of love betrayed, told with a mournful, austere tenderness as heartbreaking as it is breathtaking." - Peter Ho Davies, author of THE WELSH GIRL Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
"The stories in Monstress announce the debut of an electric literary talent. Brilliantly quirky, often moving, always gorgeously told, these are tales of big-hearted misfits who yearn for their authentic selves with extraordinary passion and grace. Bravo for this fabulous American fiction!" - Chang-Rae Lee, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of NATIVE SPEAKER and THE SURRENDER
"I've been waiting for Lysley Tenorio's first book ever since I read "Superassassin" years ago. And now that debut collection is here, and it's better than I hoped: poignant, imaginative, somehow sad and funny all at once. Tenorio's characters walk tightropes strung between the Philippines and America, between illusions and reality, between family ties and the need to strike out alone. MONSTRESS is a wonderful read. " - Anthony Doerr, author of MEMORY WALL
"Lysley Tenorio's first book [is] better than I hoped: poignant, imaginative, somehow sad and funny all at once. Tenorio's characters walk tightropes strung between the Philippines and America, between illusions and reality, between family ties and the need to strike out alone. Monstress is a wonderful read. " - Anthony Doerr, author of MEMORY WALL
"Tenorio writes persuasively about otherness and connection... [his] characters are zany, witty, and beautifully drawn... Ultimately, though, it is the unassuming pitch of these stories that makes them so exquisitely deadly." - Slate, The XX Factor
“Tenorio's stories, set amid mingling nationalities and generations, prompt comparisons to the works of Junot Díaz and Jhumpa Lahiri... But the refreshingly wry stories in Monstress are rangier and less concerned with documenting the specific experience of emigrating. Instead they're focused on uncanny moments when a character realizes that something essential to his or her life might be as false and frightening as that bucket of blood... In voicing the idiosyncratic particulars of Filipino Americana, Monstress succeeds and makes its dark fringes of modernity feel as known as a childhood home. But its goals are wider and more slippery than mere documentation. All his characters are in the process of becoming, and that leads to some unanswerable questions about who they are. That's the intersection where Monstress works best.” - Los Angeles Times