This is one of the questions explored in New Zealand author Elizabeth Knox's latest novel.
Set in the fictional Tasman Bay settlement of Kahukura, any notions this will be a conventional tale about the sunny, beachside, relaxed paradise most New Zealanders will associate with Tasman Bay are immediately dispelled with the opening scenes in which a zombie-like mass insanity grips the majority of the township's population, leaving only a handful of survivors in its wake.
The story is, at its most simplistic reading, one of survival in the face of tragedy and disaster, and how different people cope in such a situation. Knox's characters are skilfully painted - from police officer, Doc ranger, nurse to lone teenager - and their actions, emotions and relationships with each other are convincing and could easily have sustained a more conventional story in their own right.
But Knox is mistress of the fantasy genre, as lovers of The Vintner's Luck and her highly imaginative Dreamhunter series and recent young adult novel Mortal Fire will know.
At the heart of her novel is an invisible monster (and shadowy servant) from another world, which feeds on humans through their negative thoughts, feelings and obsessions. Knox blends fantasy with horror, putting the book in another realm altogether. Readers should be warned a strong stomach is needed to get past the initial scenes as the descriptions leave little to the imagination.
The harshness of the scenes is used to demonstrate the cruel reality in which the novelist has found herself. For while this can be read as a fantasy novel, it is also highly allegorical. Knox wrote the novel after her brother-in-law was killed and her mother was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, from which she subsequently died.
The book is clearly her examination of how people deal with horror and helplessness, challenge, pain and tragedy. Whether we can beat or will be consumed by our demons, and what we do when the lines between civilisation and chaos, humanity and monstrosity, sanity and madness, power and helplessness, good and evil become blurred, are all grist to the mill of Knox's darkly fertile imagination.
While I felt some of the fantasy elements of the story were too far-fetched, the characters and their fates kept me hooked.
Knox's storytelling and imaginative powers are first class. And she shows one thing is certain: the ''monsters'' under the bed are very real indeed.
Be afraid, be very afraid!
- Helen Speirs is ODT books editor.
