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Finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in Translated Literature!
“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.
506 Reviews
Hobbiesovercoffee
Created 1 day ago
Clare
Created 3 days ago
“What a strange, delightful story. There was so much about Jawbone to chew on and enjoy, and I have no idea where to start, so this review might be a mess.
Jawbone is the story of two high school students, Fernanda and Annelise, who are so close, that they are practically sisters. Shadows, even. Sometimes, something more. It is also the story of a teacher named Miss Clara who has been pushed past the breaking point so far that her already unsteady grasp on reality is shaken irreparably.
The way this story is told is twisty and at first, I found it challenging to follow. I began listening to the audiobook, then switched to ebook, and ultimately listened while I read along because I really liked the narrator’s voice but got the most mileage out of seeing the text with my eyes. There were a lot of long paragraphs, run-on sentences, references to pop culture, and sometimes dialogue that did not line up with the narrative, giving two different ideas to take in all at once.
On the surface, Jawbone tells the tale of unruly teenagers with too much freedom and privilege, who get away with treating their friends poorly and convincing boys to put themselves in dangerous situations. It tells the tale of a woman who is so obsessed with being exactly like her mother that she loses her grip on her own sense of self and becomes a target for teenagers to take advantage of.
Below the surface, however, it is an exploration of obsession, of horror, of pushing the boundaries of oneself and loved ones to become something strange, dangerous, and scary. It is the story of love gone wrong, of petty backstabbing taken way too far, and of worship of strange deities and earthly bodies. Plainly, it is the tale of girls growing into women and coming to terms with all that it means and could mean. This book is poetry. It is wonderful.
There were times when I saw a lot of myself in Annelise and Fernanda. Their strange rituals and wild imaginations were very reminiscent of myself and some of my friends in high school. The unhinged things we did out of curiosity and a love of pushing the boundaries have left actual scars that I occasionally glance at and smile wistfully. These characters are sometimes gross, and their motivations may be difficult to understand, but I felt a kinship that is indicative of a past that was perhaps not terribly good or healthy. C’est la vie, we all made it out alive.
Highly recommend to anyone who enjoys weird girl lit. I plan to own this one in translated English and its original Spanish, it is that captivating. The only thing keeping it from being a perfect 5 was how I struggled to settle into the storytelling style, and that at times, it felt like it meandered a bit. But even in those scenes, the story was quite interesting. Should I reread, I imagine my score will rise to a 5. Also, the translator's note at the end was so insightful and lovely. Props to translator Sarah Booker.”
Besse039
Created 5 days agoSummer
Created 6 days ago
About Mónica Ojeda
Mónica Ojeda (Ecuador, 1988) is the author of the novels La desfiguración Silva (Premio Alba Narrativa, 2014), Nefando (Candaya, 2016), and Mandíbula (Candaya, 2018), as well as the poetry collections El ciclo de las piedras (Rastro de la Iguana, 2015) and Historia de la leche (Candaya, 2020). Her stories have been published in the anthology Emergencias: Doce cuentos iberoamericanos (Candaya, 2014) and the collections Caninos (Editorial Turbina, 2017) and Las voladoras (Páginas de Espuma, 2020). In 2017, she was included on the Bógota39 list of the best thirty-nine Latin American writers under forty, and in 2019, she received the Prince Claus Next Generation Award in honor of her outstanding literary achievements.
Sarah Booker (North Carolina, 1989) is a doctoral candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a focus on contemporary Latin American narrative and translation studies. She is a literary translator working from Spanish to English and has translated, among others, Cristina Rivera Garza’s The Iliac Crest (Feminist Press, 2017; And Other Stories, 2018) and Grieving: Dispatches from a Wounded Country (Feminist Press, 2020) and Mónica Ojeda’s Jawbone (Coffee House Press, 2021). Her translations have also been published in journals such as the Paris Review, Asymptote, Latin American Literature Today, 3:am magazine, Nashville Review, MAKE, and Translation Review.
Other books by Mónica Ojeda
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