Mónica Ojeda

“Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?” Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise? When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality. Interweaving pop culture references and horror concepts drawn from from Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, and anonymous “creepypastas,” Jawbone is an ominous, multivocal novel that explores the terror inherent in the pure potentiality of adolescence and the fine line between desire and fear.

Jawbone

"Was desire something like being possessed by a nightmare?" Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of an abandoned cabin, kidnapped by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise? When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from Opus Dei Delta Academy for Girls convene after school, Annelise always spins the scariest stories and devises the riskiest games. Wearing her crocodile-jawbone crown, she leads them in rituals to her invented god: the rhinestone-encrusted firefly, the wandering womb, the mother pond of anacondas. Even more thrilling is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare that blurs the boundaries between affection and violence. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Obsessed with imitating her dead mother and immobilized by past traumas, each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality. In her English-language debut, Ecuadorian author Mónica Ojeda crafts an ominous, multivocal novel about adolescence, obsession, horror, and the fine line between fear and desire.

Clara Gauthier

Childhood ends with the creation of a monster that crawls around at night: an unpleasant body that cannot be trained. 

That’s how it felt to sleep handcuffed to a table: as if your bones and your flesh were two creatures fighting with open jaws to get at the roofs of each other’s mouths. 

Her being a daughter, she understood with time, had led to the death of her mother-everyone engenders their murderers, she thought, but only women give birth to them-a death she carried like a seed in her profession, her hairstyle, the way she dressed, even her gestures, but not in her beliefs or her way of speaking. 

a true modern gothic horror - def do not read if u are not able to handle early defining traits of gothic horror (specifically, incredibly fucked up and freudian relationships).

with the disclaimer out of the way, i really loved this book. ojeda writes so beautifully, and the emotion is translated so well by booker, who translated the novel from spanish to english. i was obsessed with its treatment of adolescence, as something truly terrifying and a form of cosmic horror all itself, especially in teenage girls. the book is also seeped in shame, anger, and guilt, despite fernanda’s continued insistence that guilt is boring and they’re not boring. and this whole paragraph hasn’t even touched on ojedas depictions of mother-daughter relationships as consumptive and where the line between childhood imitation and identity theft gets crossed. overall insane i loved it. 

points off for an ending that honestly left me wanting a little bit, and for some loose ends that still remained. 

a true modern gothic horror - def do not read if u are not able to handle early defining traits of gothic horror (specifically, incredibly fucked up and freudian relationships).

with the disclaimer out of the way, i really loved this book. ojeda writes so beautifully, and the emotion is translated so well by booker, who translated the novel from spanish to english. i was obsessed with its treatment of adolescence, as something truly terrifying and a form of cosmic horror all itself, especially in teenage girls. the book is also seeped in shame, anger, and guilt, despite fernanda’s continued insistence that guilt is boring and they’re not boring. and this whole paragraph hasn’t even touched on ojedas depictions of mother-daughter relationships as consumptive and where the line between childhood imitation and identity theft gets crossed. overall insane i loved it. 

points off for an ending that honestly left me wanting a little bit, and for some loose ends that still remained. 

Ryan Mateyk

At points, nearly unreadable for me. I really struggled the first 150 pages until it picked up slightly but overall, got nothing from this.

weird as shit but super good prosey and nearly loving also neurotic and horrifying 

Jawbone

Reviews

Highlights