No spec fic, no genre-bending, just darkly funny and very sharp.
This is the third Mona Awad I’ve read this year and it has a different, sadder tone than Bunny or Rouge — no spec fic, no genre-bending, just darkly funny and very sharp. The writing and character-building are actually better than Rouge, even though I loved that story more. Bunny still wins. But what Mona Awad does across all three is write about the feeling of being a smart outsider, having an inner life that isn’t what your outer self presents, being a woman set apart from other women. I have never felt more like a main character shares my personality than I do reading her books.
Vibes
- darkly funny
- very sharp
- smart outsider
- a woman set apart from other women
Why I picked it up
This is the third Mona Awad I’ve read this year.
Favorite quote
“Epic. Primordial. Gritty. Incandescent. These are just a few of the adjectives the fat girl feeds you along with her Banana-Rama bread, her peanut butter and raspberry triangles, her rocky road. She says it’s like you have Leonard Cohen’s touch with lyrics coupled with Daniel Johnston’s sincerity coupled with a Rimbaudian aura of tragedy yet with Nick Cave teeth. She doesn’t tell you not to quit your day job, like Some People. Instead, she counsels never to give up, her gaze wet, dark, and adoring as a dog’s.”
The whole chapter this comes from is a modern echo of Virginia Woolf’s line in A Room of One’s Own — that a woman is a “looking-glass possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.” Same dynamic, different century.
Would recommend to
All women. Especially all women who feel strong alone.