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.
With so few prominant Ecuadorian authors, it’s kisment to find one also from Guayaquil but who specializes in the horror genre. Or as she refers to it, Andean gothic.
One can tell Ojeda is a fan of the genre as she draws inspiration from Lovecraft’s Eldritch horrors to bloody pranks via Carrie, body horror, evil dopplegangers, monsterous women, and being haunted by a desceased yet perfect predecessor a la Du Maurier.
In combining these tropes, it makes for a crowded novel although Ojeda starts with a simmering psychological suspense. It helps that she gives minimal description and dialogue, allowing readers to become immersed with each character’s POV until it becomes their own. A perfect way to make one question the reliability of each character as Ojeda jumps from each POV/timeframe, intersplicing it with random vignettes to keep readers guessing the entire team. Much like the cover, they are stitched together scraps that form a perverse, macabre piece of work.
However, this precision loses its power in the third act where Annelise, who’s obsession with stuff like creepypasta, pushes the envelope until things go sideways.
Absolutely insane.
I’m talking incest, cut off tongues and masturbating to them, predatory women who are given no sympathy because they are so monsterous. Unfortunately, that’s where the novel loses it’s spark much like a horror movie that starts scary and turns into a gorefest too sadistic and unsubtle to enjoy.
It’s almost refreshing in the world of horror where women are almost always the victims, these are so not. Fernando is immobolized by her daughter, and would make an ideal, timid angel but she is the oppsoite. She uses her body as a tool to seduce, and violently pushes against her limits. It’s a mistake to underestimate her because she will use that to destroy you, literally. One never feels that she isn’t in just as in control as Annalise. A good representation of the fear of female sexuality society has and women feel towards themselves and each other as they grow up.
Annalise is a true psychopath, not quite on Tom Ripley’s level, but she is a great symbol for the destruction that the privileged rich can cause when they have no morals or boundaries limiting them. Throw in a cosmic demon, and she may as well be the anti-Christ with unlimited power. Plus her unequal power dynamics with everyone highlight the co-dependency in female friendships and the power struggles that form in cliques.
The only true victim might be Miss Clara, and that is in doubt due to her fragile mental state. The danger of an unstable woman is another trope that Ojeda utilizes as a catalyst for the second act and makes for lots of allegorical, symbolic stream of conciousness that is chilling because of how nonsensical it is. Truly like being in the mind of a insane person.
This is an intensely novel. I’m sure if I read it again, I’d find more stuff to analyze and such, but it’s so unsettling and gory in the final half that I’m not. Still one must admire the breadth of Ojeda’s inspiration and the numerous themes she explored-prohibitions based on culture, and gender, female sexuality and agency, gender violence, coming of age, and the complicated relationships between girls and their friends, and mothers and their daughters.
4 stars
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