Ended up putting this down and not able to pick up again because of the rampant fat-shaming in the story -- just didn't work for me at all.

loved this novel, and one I will revisit - darkly satirical about the literary world with a compelling and mysterious main character. also one of the best covers in recent memory.

Pola Oloixarac perfectly encapsulated the sad girl era in a a compulsively readable book. In it, she skewers the patriarchal bent of the literary world, online sexting, and compulsive phone addictions all while exploring identity and mental health. The book is infused with sex and power dynamics, as our protagonist finds the prospect of both intriguing, Oloixarac's voice is so strong in this novel it comes through so strongly I felt like the protagonist had pulled me inside her world. I'd say fans of Raven Leilani or Ottessa Moshfegh would like this book.

This book isn't for everyone, but it's a great book if you're the right audience. For fans of Russian Doll.

Soo very very interesting! Don’t know if I’ve read a book like this before - that alone makes it worth reading, ya know? Mona is a Peruvian writer with a diverse background. The writing is weird (and I mean that as a compliment), odd-putting at times (another compliment) and left me thinking long after I finished this. So much to discuss and think about - book clubs - worth a look!

Mona is a Peruvian writer based in the US, this story details her trip to Sweden after she is nominated for a prestigious literary award. This book was all over the place, in a great way. Each time I thought I had a handle on the genre the plot would twist into something new (feminist literary fiction to eerie thriller to magical realism/folklore). The prose is quick witted and sardonic and the characters quirky but well rounded. I can't say too much without spoiling, but the denouement of this novel is surprising and wonderfully metaphorical for Mona's past abuses. Like so many of the things I love to read this is the story of an unreliable, socially dubious, female narrator with a gritty history i.e., Moshfegh-esque. Thanks to the author and publisher for the ARC.

I picked this up (thanks to Netgalley and FSG) because of the comparisons to Rachel Cusk, which are apt. Like Cusk's KUDOS, it's mostly composed of talks at a prestigious writers' retreat, except MONA incorporates more sex, drugs, and violence (making it more like a real writers' retreat). And unlike Cusk's vague outline of a narrator, Mona is much more vividly described on the page, to the point where I was sometimes confused as to why we were getting such detailed physical descriptions of her from an outside perspective, especially in sexual situations, since the rest of the novel maintains her perspective in a close third-person. Gradually, it dawned on me that this was a trauma response, and I admired how subtly but definitively Oloixarac was able to portray Mona's disassociation through narrative technique alone. Overall, I loved this book, devoured it in a few days, and would be giving it five stars if not for the ending, which is ridiculous.

Well, this book is a hard one to review. On one level, the titular character travels to a writers' gathering in Sweden while all invited await to see which of them will be named the winner of a prestigious award. I kept expecting the protagonist of Red Pill by Hari Kunzru to show up, since both writers seem to have Things To Say about writer culture, stereotypes, and behavior. Not to mention that Mona, as a Peruvian, often experiences being othered in a variety of ways - working in the United States as a "person of color" even if that's not how she sees herself, the way others are always assuming all Latin American countries are interchangeable, and the other writer who shows up from the region seems to think she owes him something. (This is also funnier when you consider the author is Argentinian.)

So from one angle, a satire of writers and the "literary award scene." But that's not all that is going on - there are mysterious men in the woods, increasing ignored phone calls, nervous vaping, and a half remembered violent act that the reader knows less about than Mona. She also has a bit of disregard of her own body that I suspect is linked to the violence but might not be.

And then on top of everything, an ending that...I don't even know what to say about it...I'm just glad the Icelandic poet finally showed up.

Oloixarac keeps her narrative style at a fairly extreme emotional distance from her characters in MONA. The style almost reminded me of the tone of Paul Theroux's (seriously great) train-travel books--perfect observational detail at all times, and yet just a little mean.

"Mona slumped back into her seat and massaged her neck. Her nearest neighbor was across the aisle. He resembled a giant toad."

It was the perfect tone frankly for this story of a talented yet disaffected writer who is negotiating a literary scene--at the beginning of the novel she's on her way from California to accept a literary prize in Europe--that she can see is vapid, and yet wants to honor her. It's hard for me not to read this novel at least partly as a cynical but healing self-exorcism of the sudden fame Oloixarac was vaulted to after the publication of SAVAGE THEORIES but a nearly-redemptive, almost-hallucinatory ending raised the novel up for me into a memorable study of a character at odds with herself, her past, and her fame.

DNF @ 50%

"Mona" started off as an interesting story about an educated but troubled woman grappling with addiction. Halfway through, I gave up because the writing became so draggy and long-winded. I think I was expecting a more captivating novel about the ups and downs of a woman coming to terms with her complicated life. Basically this book became a chore to get through than anything else. Too bad, this baby had potential to be something great.

Thank you, Netgalley and FSG for the digital ARC.

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Home » Argentina » Pola Oloixarac » Mona (Mona)
Pola Oloixarac: Mona (Mona)

Our heroine/narrator is Mona Tarrile-Byrne. She is Peruvian and later tells us my family is Irish and Portuguese on my father’s side, and native Peruvian on my mother’s side. Mona is a writer. She has published one well-received novel and is now trying – not very successfully – to write a second. She’d started writing one of those terrifying, brilliant, and dangerous books… And now the book was starting to eat her alive. When she finally submits a copy to her French translator, the translator savages it. The dialogue is practically incomprehensible. It made me ask myself, Am I really expected to make an effort to understand? Seriously?

Mona is currently doing a doctoral thesis at Stanford. The success of her novel had been helped by a review from the great Cuban critic, Jorge Rufini who referred to its “vital commitment”… its marriage of politics and literature, the sancta sanctorum of the Latin American Boom. Wittily sancta sanctorum will later be used to describe her vagina. She was helped by being designated a woman of colour and putting Inca as her ethnicity on her application form. As you can already see, part of this novel is mocking the literature industry and we will get a lot more mockery down the line. However, Oloixarac is far too good a novelist just to write a satire of the literary world.

However, things are not going particularly well for Mona. She takes drug – cannabis, Valium and Ambien. She engages in casual sex and watches porn while masturbating. She has casual boyfriends. As mentioned her new novel is not going well. She seems adrift, lost. Sometimes Mona ended up at the Palo Alto Caltrain station, where trains to San Francisco stopped. She’d sit on a bench and watch people get on and off the trains, stare at the empty tracks, and ruminate over the details of her possible death.

Indeed, early in the book, we will find her at the Caltrain station, where she wakes up from a total blackout. She is badly bruised. It is only because she has a plane to catch as her phone reminds her, that she rapidly comes around. She does not recall how she got the bruises but she will later recall and we will learn about the incident.

The plane she has to catch is to Sweden, where the prestigious Basske-Wortz Prize is to be awarded. There are fourteen nominees and she is one. All fourteen nominees are invited to a literary festival in Sweden, at the end of which the prize will be awarded.

There are several novels about literary conferences. The best-known may well be César Aira‘s El congreso de literatura (The Literary Conference) which, apart from the fact that both are by Argentinian writers, bears little in common with this novel. However, Iván Thays‘ La disciplina de la vanidad [The Discipline of Vanity] is more relevant. Thays is Peruvian like Mona. The conference is in Spain not Sweden, but, as in this book, Thays mocks various writers and writing styles and also shows that the extramural activities – primarily eating and sex – are often what the conference is really about. Thays had a website called Moleskine (now discontinued). Mona and others use Moleskines whch may or may not be an oblique reference to Thays.

Mona is, like most of her generation, wedded to her phone and she continually gets messages, Skype requests and the like from two men – Antonio and Franco. Franco is Italian and she is turned on by the sound of the Italian language so they occasionally indulge in phone sex during the conference. Antonio is blocked.

She arrives in Sweden and they are taken to a camp and lodged in log cabins. The agenda involves each participant giving a talk and Oloixarac has great fun mocking the various writers and their works – the Iranian writer who moved to Denmark and has to learn Danish to write in that language and now claims firstly that people from his part of the world are going to take over and secondly that he is there to represent the oppressed. He gets criticised for the latter. The mad Icelander talking about the Etruscans and death and the Colombian about his Marxist soul are just two of the others she mocks.

However, Oloixarac is also a serious writer and she makes some serious points. Firstly, more and more, writers are not always monolithic in terms of their nationality. Mona has Irish and Portuguese blood as well as Peruvian, Abdullah, as we have seen, is from Iran but writes in Danish. Carmina is a Jewish Albanian-Italian. Many writers belong to more than one culture. Moreover, this exposure to different cultures is a good thing. She mentions a writer from Hawaii she had met before (not at this conference) who had never read a translated work and, indeed, seems to be almost entirely focussed on writing from Hawaii. Mona clearly thinks this is not a good thing. She herself says that she is much more interested in Japanese lyrics of terror and Nigerian poetry written in Hausa than she was in reading about rich narcos, rich intellectuals, and intellectuals who got rich writing about the poor in Miraflores, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, or Santiago.

A Nordic writer comments Well, you know, the past thirty years have been peaceful in Europe, and obviously we have to remain on the path to peace. The Macedonian writer is somewhat surprised by this statement. We – and not just writers – live too much in our own bubble.

This may well apply to the French writer Philippe Laval, for me the best of the various writers she mocks. His name recalls Pierre Laval, the Frenchman who collaborated with the Germans in the war. He himself is a pathetic Houellebecquian figure. His speech is plagiarised and he exposes himself to Mona. The lecherous Frenchman thing was beyond cliché — nobody could outdo DSK.

Given the comments made by Mona’s French translator and the fact that Oloixarac’s first novel has been published in French but not her second one or this one I wonder if she has issues with the French. or maybe the French are just so easy to mock.

Another topic which she mocks but also makes a serious point about is political correctness. Now that leftist culture is mainstream, it means absolutely nothing. Think about it: What does it mean to be a leftist? Eating vegan? Marching against the banks and then posting about it online with your iPad? The only truly untenable position is to be a militant member of the KKK, or to declare you’re a proud homophobe

One of the writers makes the point that artificial intelligence and soon AI will be writing the best novels. One writer goes further and says that the great novel already exists and it is Google. It organises and indexes everything you’ve ever done, and catalogue your desires — even the things you still don’t know you’ll desire. It keeps statistics on your loves and your hates, the various possibilities for your future. I would wholeheartedly disagree but it is an interesting point.

While the conference is going on with its talks, its eating and drinking, its sex and, as this is Sweden, its saunas (with the obligatory nudity), outside life keeps peeking in. There are seven blond men wandering round, silent. Who are they? Are they some sort of symbol? Mona finds them somewhat disturbing. She sees two dead animals – a fox with its throat slit and another unspecified animal bludgeoned. More than once she feels threatened.

Sex is ubiquitous. In reviewing her Las constelaciones oscuras (Dark Constellations). I mentioned that Oloixarac was a candidate for the Bad Sex in Fiction Award. She certainly enhances her credentials here and more than once. I will just mention the awful Marco took a long swig of whiskey and got right down to eating her sushi, which has nothing to do with Japanese cuisine.

And there are Mona’s bruises. While I was reading this book, the investigation into the death of Sarah Everard was taking place. Everard was a woman who was abducted from a London street by a serving police officer and brutally murdered. This led to an outpouring of comments in England over violence to women. Violence to women is, of course, common in Latin America and probably in virtually every country in the world. A survey in the UK revealed that almost every young woman has been harassed. This turns out to be a key issue in this book, though only appearing at the end. Mona has been beaten by a man, hence her bruising. As mentioned above, more than once she has felt threatened.

This is superb novel, mixing the funny and the mocking with many interesting and serious points, from why writers write, who they write for, who they are to death and destruction and how we cannot evade it. Oloixarac has shown herself to be one of the foremost Latin American novelists. I hope the French can appreciate her skills and translate this and her previous novel into their language.
Publishing history

First published in 2019 by Literatura Random House
First English translation in 2021 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Translated by Adam Morris

Mona, a Peruvian writer who has been living in California for some years, is invited to Sweden as she has been nominated for the notable Basske-Wortz prize, one of the most renowned literary awards of Europe. Together with other authors from diverse countries, she is to spend a couple of days in a remote resort where they have talks and give presentations. Rivalry starts immediately, some of them Mona has known for years and met at literary festivals before, others she admires for their work. However, the young woman is not too much concerned with the possibility of being awarded a famous prize, it is her life that matters most at the moment. Her body is covered with bruises and she cannot recollect where they stem from. Also her abuse of diverse substances follows her to the Swedish secludedness – travelling to the end of the world does not mean you can escape your demons.

The setting the Argentinian writer Pola Oloixarac has chosen for her third novel is perfect for a small community under a magnifying lens. None of them can escape and they have to face each other – as well as themselves. For the protagonist Mona, she herself comes to scrutinise her very own situation: where does she stand as a writer and why does her current novel refuse to advance; where do these bruises come from which hurt and yet do not give a clue of what might have happened; how to people perceive and classify her as a woman of colour who, as a doctoral candidate at one of the most prestigious universities, penetrated into an area which normally is closed to people with her background.

Even though I found the ending rather confusing, I totally enjoyed reading the novel which is remarkable due to its strong protagonist and quite a unique tone of narration with strong images and brilliant use of language.

Someone asked me what I was reading today and the only way I could describe this book was, “It’s really weird, you probably haven’t heard of it, it’s about a Peruvian author who goes to a writer’s retreat where lots of authors are behaving badly.” Think about existential dread at summer camp. But that doesn’t encompass how Mona is also a funny and brilliant book, a satire about writers and the culture around writing as an art form. This is truly a book for literary geeks who care about the drama of publishing and are fascinated by linguistics. It is meta.

Pola Oloixarac explores so many different themes here — identify as a foreigner in the US, Euro-centric elitism, imposter syndrome, sexual trauma, drug abuse, and more. It’s a feast for your mind.

There is a lot of dark and dry humor in the writing, almost saying controversial things for the sake of shock, but it is just part of our main character’s personality coming through the narrative. I was able to buy-in to our main character being so distinct from the authors around her, it was easy to see how Mona would perceive the other writers spouting their personal philosophies. Every character felt singular. This was a character study on a very niche profession.

An interesting and introspective novel with some sharp insights into the literary world. The exploration of being both a woman and an immigrant felt very embodied and resonated with me in full. My one critique would be about the overly descriptive language and writing at times, the bulk of this felt unnecessary and weighed down my insights to the character and the plot advancements. Writing about writing is hard to pull off but I think Mona did it brilliantly.

Mona by Pola Oloixarac is an interesting read. Part of it felt self-serving. Oloixarac is an outstanding young writer and this could viewed as a memoir. This is a little 'inside baseball' in the world of international lit - but honestly - I was bored with it over all.

It's a well written book but honestly just...boring. The ending was silly and didn't really make the story better in any way.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

Mona, a Peruvian writer based in Palo Alto, comes to one morning to find herself battered and bruised. She scarcely has time to wonder what has happened, as she has to catch a plane to Stockholm to attend the ceremony for the prestigious Basske-Wortz literary prize, for which she has been nominated.
Here she rubs shoulders with an international cast of fellow nominees, all the while trying to keep her injuries covered (“How long to bruises last?” is a refrain) while maintaining her punishing schedule of drink and drug intake. Mona is a woman who wears full make up to visit a sauna. She hobnobs and flirts with her fellow writers. She Skexes boyfriends back home.
It may be down to the translation, but some of the sexual passages are clumsily expressed; "She’d waxed a few days beforehand and her pores grazed the pink fabric of her panties like the wet snouts of tiny rabbits,” which jars.
Literary festivals are great, declares the French finalist, because "the memory of them is so repulsive, and you end up so disgusted by the writing ‘community’ that you have no choice but to stay home and write." The skewering of the pretensions of the international literary community does not go far enough though: it feels like a missed opportunity. The other themes: identity, feminism, politics, don’t really cohere. And the apocalyptic ending feels like one last joke the author is playing on us. A good joke, mind.

I’m judging a 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“If she were run over by a train, of course, it would totally destroy her lady parts. Of what use to science could she be in that case? And getting sawed in half under the Caltrain would be a breach of her university fellowship...No: it was better to remain a woman, Hispanic, South American, body intact, praise be to Saint Judith Fucking Butler. Mona imagined blond and Indian doctors in their white coats, stupefied by her luxurious but inert tits. Her thoughts segued into an elaborate postmortem orgy at Stanford Medical Center.”
This passage is doing so much work, aside from being funny and astute we know just the kind of feminist we’re dealing with. I want more.

Mona is a writer of Peruvian decent on her way to Sweden to join a literary convention. When she wakes up the morning of her flight, she is bruised, but can’t remember what happened. No stranger to alcohol, she muddles her way through, trying to balance academia with her penchant for self-loathing. As a woman of color, Mona is aware of the ways in which people treat her at these very white, male centric conferences and the text become a rumination on what it means to be a woman and person of color in academia. The story is in parts dark and funny, contemplative and insightful. Thank you to Farrar, Straus & Giroux and NetGalley for the advanced review copy.

This started off really good. Just ballsy, up front. Funny as hell. I had a hard time divorcing Mona's voice from Oloixarac's, even though I have never met met her and thus do not know what her voice is. I guess because Mona's beefs felt so personal. The realness that first attracted me started to drift over time as the plot slowly dissolved into a Scandinavian noir and Mona's initial voice seemed to wither. This is a side effect of the plot, which further sends Mona into a state of earnest terror.

A quick and sharp read about a young writer's experiences while attending a literary festival in Sweden, as she wades through past trauma.

This was a good book and translation; it was intelligent and raw, blending significantly female experiences with those of being a writer and immigrant.