National Book Award Finalist for Translated Fiction 2022 Ecuadorian experimental horror in which the monster is .... the female experience? Yes, pleaseNational Book Award Finalist for Translated Fiction 2022 Ecuadorian experimental horror in which the monster is .... the female experience? Yes, please! Set in a private Catholic school attended by the kids of the wealthy and influential, we meet Miss Clara, a teacher who has modeled herself as a kind of doppelgaenger of her abusive mother. Clara is also traumatized because at her former school, two girls took her hostage. But the threat of uninhibited teenage mischief still looms large, as a clique of six girls around Fernanda and Annelise meets in an abandoned house where the teenagers outdo themselves with questionable dares and challenges. Then, Miss Clara abducts Fernanda...
The novel is infused with references to classic horror lit - from Edgar Allan Poe to H.P. Lovecraft - and with urban myths as well as creepypastas, but what makes the book so unusual is that it works with the fear of female sexuality, of the female body, which is experienced by the girls and Miss Clara. The many doppelgaengers are almost a dialectic devices, while the exploration of mother-daughter as well as teacher-student relationships in all their dependency and emotional starkness are effectively portrayed. The text also dives into questions of female friendship and power dynamics between women, as Fernanda and Annelise don't only partake in power play with Miss Clara, but also with each other.
The whole thing is told in what reads like a cut-up arrangement, jumping back and forth between time frames, characters, and places: We get the perspective of Miss Clara, changing vignettes that drive the plot, the point of view of Fernanda as a hostage, way too hilarious conversations between Fernanda and her therapist, and a fantastic essay by Annelise about "white horror" (think absence of color, purity, fear of the void) and "cosmic horror" in connection with the female experience.
So all in all, this is unusual, captivating literature, even though I was a little let-down by the ending. We need more artsy horror novels that smartly discuss relevant topics - just like this one....more
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