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A review by illustrated_librarian
Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
4.0
Fernanda and Annelise are so close they're almost intertwined. They and their friends from Catholic school hold court after school in an abandoned building, following ever more deranged rituals venerating Annelise's invented bedazzled drag-queen god, while a darker secret remains for only Annelise and Fernanda to share. Meanwhile their teacher Miss Clara, obsessed with emulating her dead mother and nearing nervous exhaustion, edges further from reality every day.
A truly dark, twisted bit of fiction from South America in which the true horror is... the experience of girlhood? Of course I'm a fan.
This novel is a clamour of — skillfully differentiated — voices and formats, often mashing up dialogue in the 'present' with thoughts and memories from the 'past' from multiple povs within the same passage, though what is past, present, real, or imagined becomes increasingly slippery as things progress. The writing is beautiful, horrific yet rhythmic and compelling, employing delightfully creative language that shines in the translation. Interspersed in the prose are snippets of conversation between Fernanda and Annelise, blackly funny conversations with Fernanda's therapist, and an extended essay on Annelise's 'white horror' theory and how it relates to the cosmic horror of Lovecraft.
The result is constant unease and destabilisation, with Ojeda in complete control of revealing information and aware of the disconcerting power of leaving blanks. In fact, the whole novel is concerned with adolescence as a kind of 'white age'; a blank slate of sheer potential but also a time of shattered innocence. The colour white is a reoccurring motif symbolising terror, revelation, and the corruption inherent when something so pure touches reality.
This is a hard one to review or explain, but it's truly tapped into an aspect of writing about girlhood (especially as something "feral") that feels unique; oblique and yet dead on. It doesn't just open the wound, it makes sure to dig in too. So if you like your feral girls with lashings of existential dread, let Jawbone chew you up and spit you out.
A truly dark, twisted bit of fiction from South America in which the true horror is... the experience of girlhood? Of course I'm a fan.
This novel is a clamour of — skillfully differentiated — voices and formats, often mashing up dialogue in the 'present' with thoughts and memories from the 'past' from multiple povs within the same passage, though what is past, present, real, or imagined becomes increasingly slippery as things progress. The writing is beautiful, horrific yet rhythmic and compelling, employing delightfully creative language that shines in the translation. Interspersed in the prose are snippets of conversation between Fernanda and Annelise, blackly funny conversations with Fernanda's therapist, and an extended essay on Annelise's 'white horror' theory and how it relates to the cosmic horror of Lovecraft.
The result is constant unease and destabilisation, with Ojeda in complete control of revealing information and aware of the disconcerting power of leaving blanks. In fact, the whole novel is concerned with adolescence as a kind of 'white age'; a blank slate of sheer potential but also a time of shattered innocence. The colour white is a reoccurring motif symbolising terror, revelation, and the corruption inherent when something so pure touches reality.
This is a hard one to review or explain, but it's truly tapped into an aspect of writing about girlhood (especially as something "feral") that feels unique; oblique and yet dead on. It doesn't just open the wound, it makes sure to dig in too. So if you like your feral girls with lashings of existential dread, let Jawbone chew you up and spit you out.