Reviews with content warning for Violence - Mona

Feel quite conflicted tbh, in part not a huge fan of the main character especially at the start (very ottessa moshfegh/eliza clark coded im not a bitch i just tell it like it is) and some of the speeches felt way too long and i didn’t care but then i really liked some of the writing and while the ending wasnt quite a 5* conclusion it was pretty good and tied up pretty well

"networking" a word Americans used to describe socializing with colleagues, as though they needed a concept to justify kindness and camaraderie at work.

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tinktonk's review against another edition

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dark mysterious

2.5

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julziez's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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chichio's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

A lot of the reviews printed out on the cover of this book suggest that the novel is funny. I really don’t agree. Like… at all. Sarcastic? Sure. But this book is the kind of joke you tell at your own expense. The kind of joke you say while you swallow down a sob. It’s a hard fucking read.

Ultimately, this book is about the body and the inherent and personal traumas that it can hold. It’s about having inherent trauma from living inside a racialized body. It’s about knowing that fact but still trying to commodify it by condensing down your lived experiences into books, into art, palatable enough for wider (read: whiter) audiences. It’s about performing your own reality for profit all while living in constant fear of accidentally revealing something that’s too real, real enough to scare away your voyeurs. This book is also about personal trauma. It’s about having a body that remembers but a mind that doesn’t. It’s about finding a perverted form of freedom in that divide all while knowing that the gap between the two will eventually stop existing; humans are both the mind and the body… they can’t stay separated for long… eventually one with catch up with the other… or slow down to the other’s pace.

I really enjoyed the commentary this book had on navigating literary and academic spaces as a minority/person of colour. The main reason why I didn’t give this book a 5/5 rating is because I think the pacing is a little odd in places (would’ve loved if the book was longer, actually).

Still, it was a good read. At first, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the fantastical, absurdist tone of the ending but I’ve come to appreciate it after sitting on it for a minute. Having the tone shift when revealing something as traumatic and intense as what Mona went through actually works in highlighting the very real event. The absurdity of the fantastical brushes right up against the absurdity of reality.

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