MONUMENTA by Lara Haworth

A dry, wry humour courses through Lara Haworth’s debut, Monumenta, played out to perfection in one moment from the book’s early pages. Having received notice that her Belgrade home is being compulsorily acquired by the local government to build a monument to a massacre, empty-nester and widow Olga drops the letter on the table and asks herself, “Which massacre?” It’s a fair question for a city with such a blood-stained history.

The various possibilities unfurl in a series of visits from three shortlisted architects, each of whom come to pitch their memorial ideas to government representatives. For Olga, it’s also an opportunity to excavate her own ghosts, with her two kids flying in from their new homes for one last family dinner. There’s an air of Amy Waldman’s brilliant novel, The Submission, but - even with an odd magical realist flourish at the end - Haworth doesn’t quite capture the same absurdity of endeavour that underpins that book.

Monumenta is an enjoyable and often thought-provoking read, but, much like the enterprise of representative memory itself, ultimately feels like something of a Potemkin Village.

Monumenta by Lara Haworth
Canongate, 2024
122 pages