Pretend I'm Dead
Books | Fiction / Literary
3.6
(67)
Jen Beagin
NAMED A BEST BOOK of the YEAR by O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE, REFINERY 29, and KIRKUS REVIEWS SHORTLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE The “wondrous” (O, The Oprah Magazine), “scathingly funny” (Entertainment Weekly) debut from Whiting Award winner and author of Big Swiss Jen Beagin about a cleaning lady named Mona and her quest for self-acceptance.Jen Beagin’s funny, moving, fearless debut novel introduces an unforgettable character, Mona—almost twenty-four, emotionally adrift, and cleaning houses to get by. She falls for a man she calls Mr. Disgusting, who proceeds to break her heart in unimaginable ways. In search of healing, she decamps to Taos, New Mexico, for a fresh start, where she finds a community of cast-offs, all of whom have something to teach her—the pajama-wearing, blissed-out New Agers, the slightly creepy client with peculiar tastes in controlled substances, the psychic who might really be psychic. But always lurking just beneath the surface are her memories of growing up in a chaotic, destructive family from which she’s trying to disentangle herself, and the larger legacy of the past. The story of Mona’s quest for belonging in this world is at once hilarious and wonderfully strange, true to life and boldly human, and introduces a stunning, one-of-a-kind new voice in American fiction.
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Author
Jen Beagin
Pages
240
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Published Date
2018-05-15
ISBN
150118394X 9781501183942
Community ReviewsSee all
"Seems a little autobiographical and purposely quirky/awkward. But some real gems in the writing and pacing."
tinyhouse bigreads
"To be completely honest reading this book I felt like I was missing some deeply profound message the book was trying to convey. I was thinking that perhaps I was mentally under developed and could not see whag amazing literature I was indulging in. Despite these feelings I still cannot bring myself to say I enjoyed this book. I believe the author was going for a feeling of realness while writing this, as therefore made Mona, the main character, as “real” as possible. Now I understand that Mona is mentally unhinged so the things she says aren’t supposed to be like “omg so me” moment. I won’t lie, in the beginning I thought she was supposed to be someone you could find relatability in, you probably could if you have her experiences, but further down the boom I realized more and more that her ways of speaking to other people were more a result of her own problems. Because she meets a drug addict in chapter one it sort of sets her and this man up as two different sides, she being the normal and him being the abnormal or the one who’s crazy. The more I read the more I realized that she was also the crazy one. While I find that some people may enjoy the bluntness of topics and the way the author is unafraid to expose the reader to some uncomfortable dialogue, I just couldn’t bring myself to enjoy it. There were many parts in which I felt kind of repulsed reading this due to the sort of unhinged lifestyle Mona seems to have. The description of the novel led me to believe that her healing would look a lot different than it turned out. The healing aspect was more of a very graduate uphill process, a very small incline of healing that I didn’t notice until I later reflected on the end of the novel. "
A H
Arthur Holston
