Descrip­tions

Carol Topolski describes her book as follows : "Monster Love is about Brendan and Sherilyn Gutteridge, who live an affluent life in a Manchester suburb accessorised by all the objects success can buy – cars, houses, clothes – but who neglect their child and leave her to die. The story is told in mostly first person accounts by the couple themselves and by those who have been around them in the past and over the course of the child’s brief life and death. The evil coiling beneath their surface gloss slowly slides into view and a complicated, three-dimensional picture of two damaged individuals emerges. My ambition was not to exonerate them, but I needed to know why they’d done what they did; why it had seemed so essential to them to rid themselves of their daughter; why they considered her annihilation an act of self-defence."