My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

Karen’s life, like the pages of her diary, is filled with real and imaginary horrors. The real and imagined are juxtaposed both in her life and in her art, and Karen blends the two as a way of coping with the challenges she faces. Her imaginary art and deep passion for it is heavily inspired by her brother’s love of horror as well as his love of art. Several of the paintings they admire together are based around themes of horror and death, and this excites and intrigues Karen. One of her favorite paintings is of a demon sitting on top of a woman, scantily clad and looking as if she has been taken over. In Karen’s world, sex and horror often mix, as is regularly the case in horror films and magazines. Many of Karen’s diary pages are filled with her drawn versions of Ghastly horror magazine covers, of which she clearly puts a lot of time and effort into. These covers often depict women in vulnerable situations or being taken over by monsters. Karen also sees herself as a monster and wishes she could become one in real life. She believes that if she becomes a monster, she will be not only living as her true self, but perhaps she can also save herself and her family from death. Like Karen, Anka immerses herself in the imaginary horrors of mythology, such as the tale of Medusa turning men to stone, or Persephone being trapped in Hades. As the story unfolds, the lines between real and imagined begin to blur more and more for both Karen and Anka.

Life is filled with very real horrors, including death, sexual abuse, systemic oppression, and hatred. All of these are issues both Karen and Anka deal with as young people. Karen discovers that her mother has cancer and must grapple with the prospect of her mother’s premature death. She draws her fears out in the form of a cancer monster. Her mother is the only parent she has, and the only pillar of stability in Karen’s life. Losing her means losing that stability, and the novel leaves off with uncertainty regarding how Karen copes with her mother’s loss in the long term. Karen also finds out that her brother is a murderer, and this shakes her entire world. Anka, too, deals with the death of her protector. Sonja, the gardener and cook at the brothel, is murdered by Anka’s own mother after Sonja tries to poison her. Anka is then murdered herself in later life, which Karen attempts to solve. Anka also deals with a substantial amount of sexual abuse, first by living in a brothel, then by being trafficked by her own mother as a sex worker. These experiences leave her with deep scars, and Karen expresses this when she notes, “When adults are haunted, it’s kids who get the worst frights” (364). Karen experiences sexual abuse in the form of being exposed to her brother’s promiscuity on a regular basis; she often walks in on him in the act. Systemic oppression enters Anka’s life at an unparalleled level when the Nazis take over Germany in her youth and she is sent to a labor camp. Anka never escapes the feeling of being oppressed and trapped. Karen experiences systemic oppression in her inability to come out as queer as well as her family being kept poor and ostracized due to their immigrant status. Karen refers to two different types of monsters in her reflections:

I knew there were good monsters and bad ones…the monsters who murdered Reverend King and the President were the worst monsters…Those are the kind of monsters who want no one to be free…No, the bad monsters want the world to look the way they want it to. They need people to be afraid (365-66).

Through Karen’s coming-of-age experiences, her investigation into Anka’s death, and her discovery of Deeze’s past violence, she highlights the blurry lines between real and imagined horrors.