Liselle Sambury explores difficult mother-daughter relationships in her spooky YA novel Delicious Monsters
Q&A | CBC Books | Posted: August 4, 2023 7:47 PM | Last Updated: August 4, 2023
On the surface, Liselle Sambury's Delicious Monsters is a spooky and supernatural thriller. Dive a bit deeper and you'll see a fascinating portrait of mother, daughter, relationships and intergenerational trauma. A teen named Daisy has a huge secret.
She can see the spirits of the dead. She has no clue why or how. And only Daisy's mom Grace knows. But that's not much comfort. Grace is aloof, distant and has her own secrets. So when Daisy and her mom inherit a mysterious mansion in Northern Ontario, she jumps at the promise of a new life and a new relationship with her mom only to find out it's not the happily ever after she was hoping for.
A decade later, a young filmmaker named Brittany wants to tell Daisy's story, and as she races to piece together Daisy's truth, she must also confront her past.
Sambury spoke to The Next Chapter summer edition's Ryan B. Patrick about Delicious Monsters.
Let's talk about Delicious Monsters. There's a lot to unpack. But first, you dedicate the book to your mom. Why is that?
Partially it was because there's a lot of complicated mother-daughter relationships in the book. And I wanted to be like, "Hey, hey, this isn't about you."
That was part of it. But I also wanted to get into single mother-daughter relationships. I was raised just by my mom and she had me when she was 18. I can't imagine having a child at that age. I can barely imagine having a child in my age and I'm over 30.
My mom believed in me and all of the things that I wanted to do, even when I didn't believe in myself. - Liselle Sambury
She provided a lot of support for me. My mom believed in me and all of the things that I wanted to do, even when I didn't believe in myself. I thought a lot about how your parent has this entire history and past before you, and that might come out in how you were raised and how you were brought up. And I had a mom that worked hard to not have things trickle down to me, which of course some things do.
Daisy and her mom move to Northern Ontario from Toronto to a mansion they inherited. It's a remote area just outside of Timmins, Ont. What made this a compelling setting for the story?
I didn't know where I was going to put it. Ideally I'd like to set books in places where I've lived. And so around the time that I was thinking, 'Where am I going to set this book, where am I going to set this book?' We visited a family member who had a cottage about an hour outside of Timmins. When we were there I just remember thinking, 'Oh this is perfect.'
There was an area with power lines that had wild daisies and wild blueberries growing that kind of hum with the power running through it. It just felt like it was its own world. - Liselle Sambury
There was so many areas where the trees closed in and it was bright daylight, but suddenly it would feel dark and it kind of felt like its own separate kind of place and community. A lot of the things that are in the book are things that were in that place. There was an area with power lines that had wild daisies and wild blueberries growing that kind of hum with the power running through it. It just felt like it was its own world.
This book draws inspiration from Shirley Jackson's classic The Haunting of Hill House. How did that work influence or inform how you wanted to explore home in this book?
It was interesting. I came about it in a bit of a backwards way. I had watched the Netflix adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House, and I had been obsessed with the family dynamics of that. It was about this haunted house, but it was about the people and what they left in the house and the relationships and the memories and how that soaked into the fibre of the house.
Of course, there were ghosts and things of that nature. But it was that family dynamic that made that impression on me.
The most scary and unsettling part about it is the things that have happened in the house and the things that have left their mark on the people who have come in and out of that house. - Liselle Sambury
Then I read The Haunting of Hill House. I was very struck by the tone of it and the atmosphere and just how masterful it was to get that creeping sense of dread and unease without kind of throwing ghosts in people's face left and right. So that was what I took away from the work is I wanted to be able to get that tone into it.
What I took away from both is that the story is about the people. It's about what's left in the house, what is left in the walls. The most scary and unsettling part about it is the things that have happened in the house and the things that have left their mark on the people who have come in and out of that house.
How does the theme of forgotten Black girls kind of relate to the larger story in In Delicious Monsters?
In the beginning, in a very literal sense. These are Black girls that have gone missing or something has happened to them and it's never been figured out and nobody seems to care — so they're very much forgotten in that way. But I think as her character develops, you start to learn the ways in which other Black girls can also be forgotten.
Brittany herself is a forgotten Black girl. She grew up with an abusive mother and nobody helped her, nobody saved her and nobody checked in on her. She was very much just kind of left to her own devices and is very much forgotten in that way. I think that resonates with her and that pushes her, and I don't think she necessarily consciously realizes that until later on.
It's very much about the ways in which Black girls are underserved by authority figures - Liselle Sambury
But it is definitely something that gets repeated. It's very much about the ways in which Black girls are underserved by authority figures, by people that are supposed to be helping them and the tragedy of that — but also bringing light to that and trying to stop that, right?
There's heavy stuff happening, but you have some trigger warnings at the start of the book. You accompany that with the author's note. Why did you want to include that?
I always want my readers to know what they're getting into, if they need it. I always want to be able to put content warnings in there in case of that. Especially when I'm writing for teens. Sometimes just knowing what's coming up front can be helpful in that way.
For me, first and foremost, I do always want my readers to know what they're getting into, if they need it. - Liselle Sambury
When I was a child, I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and that was a story that I saw myself in. I saw a story similar to mine for the first time, and it made such a huge difference to me. It was helpful for me as a child and working through my own trauma. This book was important to me in the hopes that it can maybe do that for someone else.
Liselle Sambury's comments have been edited for length and clarity.