Almost every author uses the raw material of their life to fuel their writing, and Yigit Turhan is no exception. Turhan’s enchanting new novel, Their Monstrous Hearts, takes in everything from family secrets, hidden manuscripts, and mysterious butterflies to eternal life and a mercurial grandmother—I’d say more, but: spoilers—and will be published on April 8 by Mira, an imprint of HarperCollins. As I chatted with him recently, he recalled something that proved to be the very definition of a formative experience when he was about five years old at his grandparents’ home in eastern Turkey.
The young Turhan was tucked up in bed one night when his grandmother asked if he wanted to come watch an episode of Freddy’s Nightmares, a television spin-off of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Like any kid curious about the arcane mysteries of adulthood, he did—which is how Turhan found himself curled beside his beloved grandmother, Sevgi (it means love in Turkish), an array of snacks in front of them on the coffee table, while watching some hapless victim of Freddy’s having their fingers chopped off for hot dogs. Watching Bluey, this was not.
“To this day, I can remember that scene vividly,” says Turhan, laughing. “A cozy atmosphere, my really glamorous grandmother in her pink nightdress, eating popcorn and watching this show like it was a romantic comedy. I have the best memory of that—because I wasn’t scared, you know? I was not terrorized. She made horror films fun, because she showed me there was nothing to be afraid of.”
To be clear, Their Monstrous Hearts is not a blood-splattered gorefest. Instead of outright horror, it invokes a creeping sense of unease and a growing bewilderment about those whom we love and think we know well. The mood is somewhat akin to the unfolding chills of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, a favorite of Turhan’s. (Turhan loves the horror genre, from the giallo movies of directors Mario Bava, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci to the novels of Stephen King—Misery, especially.)
In this case, however, his Milan-set tale of Perihan, the recently deceased grandmother, and the struggling-writer grandson Riccardo who adores her and returns home for her funeral is filtered through the lens of the mystically surreal—and shaded with a sly, dry humor: The early scenes in Paris of Riccardo failing to write anything while endlessly distracting himself will give anyone who has struggled to put finger to laptop (I’m thinking of myself here, btw) a wry sense of recognition.
