Mona

December 7, 2020
Argentinian writer Oloixarac (Dark Constellations) offers a smart, provocative take on contemporary literary culture. At the novel’s opening, Stanford doctoral candidate Mona, a deeply cynical Peruvian, wakes up on a train platform in Palo Alto, Calif., with her body badly bruised and no memory of how she came to be in such a state. She quickly cleans up so she can travel to Sweden for a conference where she’s been nominated for an award. At the event, speakers express anxiety about technology’s impact on literature, but far more interesting are Mona’s exchanges with fellow writers and her theory-infused interior monologues. Aware that being a Latina gives her a “chic sort of cultural capital” with American universities, she reflects on the tendency of writers to play up “their own local colors.” After Mona hooks up with another writer who notices her bruises, her memories of the injuries sustained back at Stanford start to return. While a sudden and not entirely successful swerve into fantasy makes for an abrupt ending, Mona’s spirited opining gives readers much to engage and argue with. The rich inner life of its namesake character propels this vibrant examination of the writing world. Agent: Maria Lynch, Casanovas & Lynch Literary.

December 15, 2020
In this third novel by Argentinian Oloixarac, an award ceremony for a major European literary prize takes an apocalyptic turn. The eponymous protagonist, a Peruvian writer and doctoral candidate at Stanford, leaves California for Stockholm to attend the award ceremony for the prestigious Basske-Wortz literary prize. Drugged to the gills and covered in bruises from a night she can't remember, she sips Stoli on the plane, ignoring the messages on her phone and meditating on American racism: "American universities shared certain essential values with classical zoologists, for whom diversity was a mark of attraction and distinction." She and 12 other writers from around the world, all finalists, converge for four days of panels and lectures beside a Swedish lake. Oloixarac's debut novel, Savage Theories (2017), was a bestseller in Argentina and catapulted her to a certain literary fame; she describes this congress of international writers with a jaundiced and convincing eye. (As the French finalist puts it, literary festivals are good 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.") Savage Theories displayed the dizzying, at times manic, promise of a writer making original connections between wide-ranging subjects. This is a narrower effort and a considerably less successful one. There's a lot of material here: ideas about what it means to write, about politics and South American literature ("Now that leftist culture is mainstream, it means absolutely nothing. Think about it: What does it mean to be a leftist? Eating vegan?"); a decapitated fox; Mona's mysterious bruises; a mythological sea serpent; plenty of nudity and several sex scenes ("She'd waxed a few days beforehand and her pores grazed the pink fabric of her panties like the wet snouts of tiny rabbits"). But there's little narrative cohesion between them. After reading a draft of her next book, Mona's French translator asks, "Why should I care about these people?" Why, indeed? Disappointing, because this author can do better.

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February 1, 2021
Mona is a product of our times. Cynically, she views herself as a woman whose stellar debut novel and Latinx identity in Trump's America have gained her employment at Stanford. Expectations for a second novel loom large while she travels to Sweden as a finalist for the country's top literary prize. Mona's insecurities, worsened by horrifying signs of physical abuse, refract every perceived slight she registers at the festival. Oloixarac (Dark Constellations, 2015) delivers a scathing indictment of the book circuit, where nobody wants to point out that the emperor has no clothes. "The ways that each of them appropriated their own local colors and used them as the backdrop for playing their parts in the theatrical literary market: these were just the modern tools of the trade, weapons in the battle royale of 'world lit, '" she writes. Even if the cynicism feels heavy-handed at times, Mona emerges as an intriguing subject, a woman who worries that the sum of her talents distills down to nothing more than her potent yet fragile sexuality.

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