A review by verbamatic
Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I have never read anything quite like this novel by the Ecuadorean writer Mónica Ojeda (Coffeehouse Press, tr. Sarah Booker). Reading the intricate yet mounting passages was like slowly ascending tall volcanoes and then gushing down from them like lava.

I really enjoyed the impeccable switches between the overlapping character arcs. The deaf, blinding madness; the adolescent extremes, the repressed and terrifying sexuality, the brutal violence, the poetry of it all. I loved the aesthetic of the psychoanalysis scenes: how the therapist’s dialogue was omitted, it made them so disturbing. It is a great weird horror read, though very challenging at times.

It is one of those novels that feel like reading an entire life, or a stream-of-conscience of a collective psyche, and in this case it caught me suffocating, yet thrilled, in the everyday human horrors brought to the extreme.

I enjoyed Sarah Booker’s translator note, and even though I don’t speak Spanish, judging from the final text in English, it must have been a formidable challenge to translate, and in my opinion it is a great success.
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