Monumenta is a short novel but both complex and cryptic. It is about monuments, memories, memorialising, massacres, mediums and mourning, about properties being requisitioned and about family homes.

The story opens with Olga – who lives alone (her husband Branko having died; her two children Hilde and Danilo living overseas) in her rather grand family home in Belgrade – receiving a City Municipality letter informing her that her home is being requisitioned for the building of a monument to a massacre – which massacre being very unclear. Three architects will be visiting on different days to pitch to the City officials their vision for the monument. After calling some of her friends she calls her children to insist they come home, for the first time in years, for a final dinner.

Much of the rest of the book traces the journeys and stories of the three architects and the two children – and their interactions with Olga (and in some cases each other).

Karl is visiting from Amsterdam – but mourning the break-up of his relationship he decides on landing in Belgrade to visit before the official date. His assumption is that the massacre is that including the King and Queen of Serbia in 1903 (Olga points out that as this lead to King Peter taking the throne that massacre was not particularly mourned) and his idea is to replace the house with an excavated crater.

Misha – an old acquaintance of Olga and something of a famous old Serbian architect would be favourite for the job but he is discombobulated both by a family of (possibly) refugees who appear to have commandeered his garden as their new home, and his own diminishing status with many of famous building being demolished. He proposes keeping the family home but encasing it in a fake shopping mall and believes the “massacre” to be that of the old Yugoslavia. He also has a discovery from his research – that unbeknownst to Olga (but it turns out later known to Branka) the house was itself requisitioned from another family (who had already had to get it back after Nazi seizure in WWII) and given to Olga and Branka in the 1970s.

Chara from London has a brilliantly complex answer to the “but where you are from, originally” question which is presumably prompted by mix race – it begins with Royalist and Catholic relatives transported to Barbados (and some others to Ghana) in the aftermath of the Civil War Battle of Naseby. Her idea is to commemorate the massacre of memory itself in favour of statuary and to gather all of the monuments in the City and house them in and around the requisitioned property.

Meanwhile Hilde (whose story at one stage moves to the second person mirroring the increasingly accusing voice in her head) – a hitherto successful construction CEO is focused on the potential repercussions of her own massacre – a group of workers buried alive on site just as Olga was calling her; and Danilio is haunted both by childhood memories that something unknown but dangerous is buried in the front garden and his misplaced fear that his mother will reject him if she knows of his sexuality (which feelings are exacerbated when he is highly attracted to the ageing Misha). And both are rather thrown by the mother’s eccentric behaviour, including stepping over what she believes to be the body of Branka on the kitchen floor.

And meanwhile some surreal visions – winger Hussars, a possibly phantom party – make it hard for us to tell what is real and what is imagined (or even if the difference really matters in a book whose focus is on memory) – and the book ends with the fourth family member making an inevitable appearance.

A very distinctive novel and one I would not be surprised to see on the Goldsmith Prize longlist.

Lara Haworth 's Monumenta is a wonderfully curious and thought-provoking novel.

Rather like watching a Wes Anderson or Jean-Pierre Jeunet movie, Monumenta challenges your initial perceptions and understandings; quirky and often with the feel of some type of hallucinogenic experience the reader is taken to Belgrade where Olga Pavić receives a letter to say her home is to be demolished in order to build a monument.

What the monument fully commemorates is never truly defined but it is to acknowledge a massacre- which /what one? ; however against the backdrop of Serbian and Yugoslavian history potential reasons for a monument are explored.

Olga calls her two children home to have one final meal - Danilo and Hilda. Both have different feelings about returning home. Three architects. are selected to create the potential design...and so follows a curious array of characters who emotionally are challenged by the circumstances and their own lives.

This is a clever novel that truly makes us reflect upon the purpose of statures, memorials , monuments... what do they truly tell us and what do they make us actually forget- the truth behind the image .

This a relevant and important novel especially in times where statues/memorials/ monuments erected in the past to celebrate colonialism /imperialism are sitting uncomfortably within communities/society today .

A short novella but with a big punch

Quote from the novel :
"The monument I am proposing is specific to Belgrade but in many ways could apply to any city in the world, because the massacre I wish to remember is the failure of memorialisation itself. The massacre of the memory in favour of statuary."

I'm having a hard time focusing to read lately. So when I say this book was hardworking, please know, it's my issue. The writing is strong, the characters are interesting and it looks at a serious subject through a heavy veil of irony.