Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda

 

To read Ojeda's Jawbone is to be drawn into a disorienting world where the line between clique and cult is perilously thin. 

Ojeda's use of language and structure is unusual and resists momentum. I often found myself needing to reread sentences. Before it even begins it is bold, indulgent, excessive: there are ten (ten!) epigraphs ranging from Lacan to Mary Shelley. The first page is a jumble of references, impressions, and thoughts that evokes the character Fernanda's confused mindset: She's regained consciousness in a strange place to find the new teacher at her parochial girls school has kidnapped her.

Then we meet, through Fernanda's memories, her best friend Annelise and her followers, other wealthy, bored high schoolers. Annelise introduces them to a flashy "drag-queen god of her own invention," as the back of the book puts it, as well as an abandoned half-completed building where this god is invoked through increasingly dangerous dares and disturbing story-telling inspired by their favorite creepypastas. 

This is a book I already want to reread. While the setting is Ecuador and the girls reference viral videos and Lana Del Rey, there is something both timeless and placeless about the story itself. It's about the confusing time between childhood and adulthood, complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, burgeoning sexuality, but most of all, how totally scary high school girls are.