Jawbone
SynopsisPlot
Fernanda and Annelise are so close they are practically sisters: a double image, inseparable. So how does Fernanda end up bound on the floor of a deserted cabin, held hostage by one of her teachers and estranged from Annelise? When Fernanda, Annelise, and their friends from the Delta Bilingual Academy convene after school, Annelise leads them in thrilling but increasingly dangerous rituals to a rhinestoned, Dior-scented, drag-queen god of her own invention. Even more perilous is the secret Annelise and Fernanda share, rooted in a dare in which violence meets love. Meanwhile, their literature teacher Miss Clara, who is obsessed with imitating her dead mother, struggles to preserve her deteriorating sanity. Each day she edges nearer to a total break with reality.
Story
About this book
Jawbone follows two teenage girls, Fernanda and Annelise, students at the Delta Bilingual Academy, whose intense bond drives the novel's central tensions. The story opens with Fernanda captive in an abandoned cabin, held by one of her own teachers and separated from Annelise. From this stark starting point, the narrative moves between perspectives and timescales to trace how such an outcome became possible.
At school, Annelise draws her circle of friends into after-hours rituals devoted to a deity she has invented, a rhinestoned, perfume-scented figure modeled on drag aesthetics. These gatherings grow more extreme over time. Beneath them lies a shared secret between Annelise and Fernanda, born from a dare that blurs the boundary between affection and harm. In a parallel thread, their literature teacher Miss Clara is consumed by an effort to replicate her deceased mother, a fixation that steadily erodes her grip on reality.
Monica Ojeda, an Ecuadorian writer, constructs the novel through multiple voices. The structure places adolescent intensity and adult collapse side by side, linking them through overlapping fears and desires. Guayaquil-born Ojeda has been recognized as one of Latin America's notable younger fiction writers.
