Mónica Ojeda: Jawbone [Spotlight]
“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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In 2017, Mónica Ojeda was included on the Bógota39 list of the best thirty-nine Latin American writers under forty. In 2019, she received the Prince Claus Next Generation Award in honor of her outstanding literary achievements.
PRAISE FOR JAWBONE
“Six girls in a private Catholic high school in Ecuador turn to the occult in Mónica Ojeda’s macabre English-language debut novel, Jawbone. Ojeda has drawn comparisons to Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allen Poe.” —The A.V. Club
“Delectable. . . . There are echoes of Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson at play, but the vision is ultimately Ojeda’s own—delicious in how it seduces and disturbs the reader as the girls rely on horror both as entertainment and as a way of staving off the actual terrors of growing up. This is creepy good fun.” —Publishers Weekly
“[Mónica Ojeda] scares me, and she amazes me, and I think she is one of the most important writers working in Spanish today.” —Mariana Enríquez
“Jawbone is a dark fairy tale in which a group of girls become adults on their own, taking blood oaths with cruelty, torture, and vengeance. This book summons the evil spirits that surround all adolescence, and they’re made to speak straight into our ears. As chilling as it is necessary, like all of Ojeda’s work.” —María Fernanda Ampuero
“Mónica Ojeda has at her disposal the most enviable combination I can imagine, and she has it in spades: a lucid mind, an exacting language, and a wild heart.” —Andrés Barba