Ruth Estevez is the author of Jiddy Vardy and Erosion.  Her latest novel is The Monster Belt which published in September with UCLan publishing.  Ruth is the project co-ordinator for The Portico Sadie Massey Awards and has previously written for Youth Libraries Review  about young people’s reviewing.  We are delighted to welcome Ruth to the blog at the start of Libraries Week to talk about the supernatural as a means for exploring grounded themes (such as loss, hope and dreams) in her new novel The Monster Belt.

One of the main characters in The Monster Belt, seventeen year old Dee, has encounters with both mythical and real creatures and her interactions with them reflect who she is, how she’s feeling emotionally and how she develops. The fact that she is more afraid of the real creatures than the stranger, supernatural ones, adds to the theme of questioning what the term monster means. Throughout the book there are dictionary definitions and Dee is on a quest to find her own, with hopefully, the reader aiming to do the same.

Eventually, Dee realises that some questions do not require answers, as shown by her actions near the end of the book.

Using the supernatural in the story not only provides wonderful visuals to stoke our imaginations, but it also offers the expected exciting and sometimes frightening moments. Various reactions to any of the creatures in the book aims to ask the reader how they react when they encounter something alien to them. I use tender moments in the supernatural encounters, to show how the unknown does not need to be frightening, but can be something to embrace. The use of the supernatural in this way, shows that our labels for creatures we don’t understand may be mistaken and we need to rethink them. Dee is labelled a Monster Magnet because she sees these creatures, in this aspect, she is immediately set apart and the theme of identity and belonging are raised.

An exterior and ‘other’ entity, such as a squonk, or Loch Ness type creature, mirrors Dee’s emotions and helps us see her inner world visually as well as creating another thread to the story. The fact that the other main character, Harris, feels he has merely glimpsed a shadowy outline of a sea monster and is desperate to see it clearly and meet it, is a way of showing that he is blocking his emotions and only when he acknowledges his grief that his best friend has died will he have any chance of seeing the creature he is on a mission to find. He focuses his grief on tracking down a physical being and by his quest to find this ‘monster’ that killed his friend, he masks his grief in anger and in ‘doing.’ Only when he stops searching and let’s go, is he able to move on.

The book is a coming of age story and at this time in our lives, we are often searching for answers, exploring our emotions, our identity and trying to make sense of what is happening around us. This is a time to look for possibilities, new experiences and to follow dreams. By placing the characters in a world where anything is possible, that there is a real chance that a mythical type creature resides in the village lake, or that a sea monster killed Harris’s best friend, we have permission to question everything. And by making them both outsiders, they find they have the freedom to follow their own paths rather than unquestioningly joining the majority.

The end of the book brings resolutions, but also shows that one choice doesn’t have to be the final one and that when one ending comes, another journey begins.