Finalist for the 2022 National Book Award for Translated Literature
Finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Fiction
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN Translation Prize
A February Indie Next Pick
A Ms. Magazine Favorite Book of 2022
A Words Without Borders Most Anticipated Book of 2022
A Latinx in Publishing Most Anticipated Book of 2022
“Expertly characterizing her protagonists while providing an engrossing, compelling story, Mónica Ojeda has hewn out her own version of contemporary gothic set in Ecuadorian culture.”
—Judges’ Citation, 2022 National Book Award in Translated Literature
“Strange, twisted . . . . [Ojeda's] language, like adolescence itself, is unruly and excessive, full of dramatic shifts and capable of both beauty and horror.”
—Anderson Tepper, The New York Times
“Ojeda [draws] comparisons to Shirley Jackson, H.P. Lovecraft, and Edgar Allen Poe.”
—The A.V. Club
“Jawbone depicts the process of becoming a woman as the ultimate horror story. . . . With terrifying ease, Ojeda illustrates how womanhood is characterized by dualities: fearful and feared, desired and desiring.”
—Morgan Graham, Chicago Review of Books
“Rife with gothic body horror and the darkness of the jungle and within ourselves. . . . Ojeda is a strikingly singular voice, combining basic teen angst with stark madness and the power of teen girls to push back in a world that tries to make them powerless.”
—Yvonne C. Garrett, The Brooklyn Rail
“Delicious in how it seduces and disturbs the reader as the girls rely on horror both as entertainment and as a way of staving off the actual terrors of growing up.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Every good horror story needs a victim; Ojeda’s monsters and victims wear the same faces.”
—Kirkus
“Like the strange bloom of a corpse flower, the novel evokes life, death, and a vortex of twisted beauty.”
—Meg Nola, Foreword Reviews starred review
“A wild, dirty, surreal, creepy narrative.”
—Gabino Iglesias, Southwest Review
“Mónica Ojeda is one of the most powerful and provocative voices in Latin American literature today.”
—Rose Bialer, Asymptote
“Annelise (and, by proxy, Ojeda) are onto something about the primal appeal of horror literature; what Ojeda seems to be doing here, in part, is pushing that theory to its limits, and learning just how unsettling that can be.”
—Tobias Carroll, On the Seawall
“There’s very little that will be published this year, or any year, that will surpass this devastating novel.”
—Ian Mond, Locus
“Ojeda deals with horror and desire like few others, with a beauty so extreme that it sometimes leaves you gasping. She scares me, and she amazes me, and I think she is one of the most important writers working in Spanish today.”
—Mariana Enríquez
“As chilling as it is necessary, like all of Ojeda’s work.”
—María Fernanda Ampuero
“Mónica Ojeda has at her disposal the most enviable combination I can imagine, and she has it in spades: a lucid mind, an exacting language, and a wild heart.”
—Andrés Barba
