Mona: Pola Oloixarac
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Beschreibung
Mona, a Peruvian writer based in California, presents a tough and sardonic exterior. She likes drugs and cigarettes, and when she learns that she is something of an anthropological curiosity―a woman writer of color treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings―she pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity.
When she is nominated for “the most important literary award in Europe,” Mona sees a chance to escape her downward spiral of sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, so she trades the temptations of California for a small, gray village in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle. Now she is stuck in the company of all her jet-lagged―and mostly male―competitors, arriving from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran, and Colombia. Isolated as they are, the writers do what writers do: exchange compliments, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back, and hop in bed together. All the while, Mona keeps stumbling across the mysterious traces of a violence she cannot explain.
As her adventures in Scandinavia unfold, Mona finds that she has not so much escaped her demons as locked herself up with them in the middle of nowhere. In Mona, Pola Oloixarac paints a hypnotic, scabrous, and ultimately jaw-dropping portrait of a woman facing down a hipster elite to which she does and does not belong. A survivor of both patronization and bizarre sexual encounters, Mona is a new kind of feminist. But her past won’t stay past, and strange forces are working to deliver her the test of a lifetime.
Buchinformationen
Beiträge
Have you ever sat on a plane, crammed into what seemed to be the least comfortable seat in economy, when turbulence hit, and your shins proceeded to repeatedly hit the hard, cold plastic of the seat in front of you? When unpredictable air masses decided to rattle the entire plane, that magic machine that was the only thing keeping you alive at this very moment? Has this happened to you? If your answer is yes, then you are exceptionally capable of imagining the comfort reading “Mona” by Pola Oloixarac brings the reader. Here is a collection of adjectives that sprang to mind while I was trying my very best to enjoy that novel with the very instagrammable cover: repetitive, flat, sarcastic, pointless. Yes, the “sarcastic” is a good thing, and I did in fact like the snarky comment this entire book made about the international literary scene. But that’s also where the enjoyment ends. Let me summarize the plot: Young woman with emotional trauma feels displaced and is invited to international literary event of mediocre repute. Of course, dead animals play some kind of metaphoric role (can you tell I am sick of that trope already), sex and genitalia are sprinkled in liberally, crudely and without warning. Pseudo-intellectual conversations about life and literature are being had. Weird things happen. Big reveal at the end, at which point the entire narrative is already so convoluted that you remember nobody’s names and have a hard time understanding what even going on, what is real, what is a fever dream, and which of the words were merely forgotten by the editor. Mind you: I am just a reader with an opinion, and a nervous flyer. Some people enjoy turbulence because it makes traveling “more fun”, and frankly, if you’re one of these people, the realities of your life and mine lie so far apart that you might very well enjoy reading “Mona”.
Beschreibung
Mona, a Peruvian writer based in California, presents a tough and sardonic exterior. She likes drugs and cigarettes, and when she learns that she is something of an anthropological curiosity―a woman writer of color treasured at her university for the flourish of rarefied diversity she brings―she pokes fun at American academic culture and its fixation on identity.
When she is nominated for “the most important literary award in Europe,” Mona sees a chance to escape her downward spiral of sunlit substance abuse and erotic distraction, so she trades the temptations of California for a small, gray village in Sweden, close to the Arctic Circle. Now she is stuck in the company of all her jet-lagged―and mostly male―competitors, arriving from Japan, France, Armenia, Iran, and Colombia. Isolated as they are, the writers do what writers do: exchange compliments, nurse envy and private resentments, stab rivals in the back, and hop in bed together. All the while, Mona keeps stumbling across the mysterious traces of a violence she cannot explain.
As her adventures in Scandinavia unfold, Mona finds that she has not so much escaped her demons as locked herself up with them in the middle of nowhere. In Mona, Pola Oloixarac paints a hypnotic, scabrous, and ultimately jaw-dropping portrait of a woman facing down a hipster elite to which she does and does not belong. A survivor of both patronization and bizarre sexual encounters, Mona is a new kind of feminist. But her past won’t stay past, and strange forces are working to deliver her the test of a lifetime.
Buchinformationen
Beiträge
Have you ever sat on a plane, crammed into what seemed to be the least comfortable seat in economy, when turbulence hit, and your shins proceeded to repeatedly hit the hard, cold plastic of the seat in front of you? When unpredictable air masses decided to rattle the entire plane, that magic machine that was the only thing keeping you alive at this very moment? Has this happened to you? If your answer is yes, then you are exceptionally capable of imagining the comfort reading “Mona” by Pola Oloixarac brings the reader. Here is a collection of adjectives that sprang to mind while I was trying my very best to enjoy that novel with the very instagrammable cover: repetitive, flat, sarcastic, pointless. Yes, the “sarcastic” is a good thing, and I did in fact like the snarky comment this entire book made about the international literary scene. But that’s also where the enjoyment ends. Let me summarize the plot: Young woman with emotional trauma feels displaced and is invited to international literary event of mediocre repute. Of course, dead animals play some kind of metaphoric role (can you tell I am sick of that trope already), sex and genitalia are sprinkled in liberally, crudely and without warning. Pseudo-intellectual conversations about life and literature are being had. Weird things happen. Big reveal at the end, at which point the entire narrative is already so convoluted that you remember nobody’s names and have a hard time understanding what even going on, what is real, what is a fever dream, and which of the words were merely forgotten by the editor. Mind you: I am just a reader with an opinion, and a nervous flyer. Some people enjoy turbulence because it makes traveling “more fun”, and frankly, if you’re one of these people, the realities of your life and mine lie so far apart that you might very well enjoy reading “Mona”.