Teenage perversion.
This story revolves around a vicious secret: why the language and literature teacher has kidnapped one of her students at an elite Opus Dei girls’ school.
Fernanda, the kidnapped student, is a fan of horror movies and creepypastas (viral horror stories on the internet). Together with her group of friends, she ventures every afternoon after school to an abandoned building where they perform extreme physical activities. There, they play with fear, religion, desire, and humiliation, transforming and breaking away from their ultra-conservative environment, creating their own mythology and a world with its own rules, hierarchies and punishments.
In addition, Fernanda, along with her best friend Annelise, begins to discover her sexuality and to explore the dark side of sex: the side where pleasure and pain become dangerously close.
Annelise, as the events reveal, has a rather disturbing mind and a great capacity to manipulate others. She is the catalyst for Fernanda’s abduction and is the leader of the group of girls who, by seeking horror as a source of adrenaline, eventually creates a temple where they carry out disturbing and immoral activities.
The teacher, Clara, is suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome after two former students invaded her home and assaulted her to steal some exams. She is also troubled by her difficult relationship with her mother. When she starts working at Delta Bilingual School, she realizes that she has developed an irrational and pathological fear towards teenage girls, whom she finds threatening, and has an overflowing sexuality that clashes directly with her obsession with control and order.
Women of different ages who go beyond the limits of what is right and voluntarily advance towards the adrenaline of the forbidden. Mothers, teachers, students, and best friends form an atmosphere of fear of desire, sex and death, in a plot punctuated by a disturbing young love, an irreparable betrayal and a revenge taken to its ultimate consequences.
RELEVANT DATA: Jawbone develops the game that takes place between students and teachers and delves into the passionate relationships between mothers and daughters, sisters and “best friends”, recreating a world of the female monstrosity that connects with the tradition of horror films and genre literature.
Mónica Ojeda is one of the most relevant novelists in contemporary Latin American literature. She has published novels with a spectacular critical reception and is currently one of the young Spanish-language authors with the greatest international projection.
She is part of the prestigious Bogotá 39-2017 list, which includes the 39 Latin American writers under the age of 40 with the most talent and projection of the decade. She has also been awarded the Prince Claus Next Generation Award and the ALBA Narrative Award, as well as being among the finalists of the Mario Vargas Llosa Biennial Novel Award and the Ribera del Duero Short Narrative Award.
What the critics have said:
“Mónica Ojeda (Guayaquil) has just published one of the most audacious novels of the season: Jawbone.” Babelia, El País
“With her book Jawbone, Ojeda was ranked 12th among the 50 best books of 2018, in the list compiled by El País.” El Universo
“The novel is written in a brilliant style, full of talent and, in addition, with a highly developed and subtle sense of structure, making this one of the best ‘thrillers’ I have been given to read at this time when floods of books in this genre are being published.” ABC.es
AUDIOVISUAL POTENTIAL: TV Series, Miniseries, Film, TV Movie.
LANGUAGES AVAILABLE: Spanish, English, French, Italian and Greek.
