Monarch: A Novel

by Candice Wuehle Narrated by Rebecca Lowman

Overview

The cryptic worlds of Hanna and Stranger Things mingle with the dark humor of Dare Me in this debut audiobook about a teen beauty queen who discovers she's been a sleeper agent in a deep state government program

After waking up with a strange taste in her mouth and mysterious bruises, former child pageant star Jessica Clink unwittingly begins an investigation into a nefarious deep state underworld. Equipped with the eccentric education of her father, Dr. Clink (a professor of Boredom Studies and the founder of an elite study group known as the Devil's Workshop), Jessica uncovers a disquieting connection between her former life as a beauty queen and an offshoot of Project MKUltra known as MONARCH.
 
As Jessica moves closer to the truth, she begins to suspect the involvement of everyone around her, including her own mother, Grethe (a Norwegian pageant queen turned occult American wellness guru for suburban housewives). With the help of Christine (her black-lipsticked riot grrrl babysitter and confidante), Jessica sets out to take down Project MONARCH. More importantly, she must discover if her first love, fellow teen queen Veronica Marshall, was genuine or yet another deep state plant.
 
Merging iconic true crime stories of the '90s (Lorena Bobbitt, Nicole Brown Simpson, and JonBenét Ramsey) with theories of human consciousness, folklore, and a perennial cultural fixation with dead girls, MONARCH questions the shadow sides of self-concept: Who are you if you don't know yourself?

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Shortlisted for the 2022 Over the Rainbow Recommended Book List

Named a Best Book by NPR, Morning News, Lambda Literary, CrimeReads, and more
Bustle, A Most Anticipated Book of the Month
Literary Hub, A Most Anticipated Books of the Year

"Candice Wuehle's irresistibly weird debut novel MONARCH is the kind of book that you want to start reading again immediately after turning the last page—not just to trace the conspiracy at its heart, but to appreciate how its kaleidoscope of beauty pageants, Y2K anxieties, famous dead girls, and deep state machinations synthesizes into an exploration of what makes up a self . . . Poetic, haunting." —Kristen Martin, NPR

"If the vacant, robotic gaze of the beauty queen has ever seemed sinister to you, Ms. Wuehle provides a possible reason . . . Wuehle pursues her gonzo premise with satirical gusto, mixing together some curious brew of Robert Ludlum and Don DeLillo . . . [A] lively debut." —Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Intoxicating and strange . . . A novel that's as addicting as it is heartbreaking." —Sophia June, NYLON, One of the Must-Read Books of the Month

"Candice Wuehle had me at 'Jon Benet Ramsey.' The poet's new novel follows a former child pageant star as she discovers ties to her previous glory and a deep state government program. Add an occult wellness guru to the mix, a heaping of mommy issues, and a queer romance for taste and this might just be my ideal book." —Kerensa Cadenas, Thrillist

"Bizarre delight of a debut novel . . . A natural page-turner." —Lily DeTaeye, Little Village

"Wuehle’s net of insights, jokes, linguistic will-o’-the-wisps push the definition of surreal . . . Wuehle is a poet writing a thriller, and the cerebral, beautiful poetry intoxicates the story . . . A maze of lyrically breathtaking imagery and storytelling that rivals the stepping-stone pathways across the dream-river in the films of Charlie Kaufman (see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Synechdoche, New York, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, etc) . . . ‘90s pop culture, espionage, occultism are all bonded in an amalgam of feminist folklore for the 21st century." —Jesse Hilson, Pink Plastic House

"Monarch is a novel of ideas welded to the structure of a page-turner . . . Darkly comic, cynical, thought-provoking, and strange, Wuehle’s novel is a rare offering." —Mara Krause, ZYZZYVA

"Wuehle is catching a wave of nineties nostalgia and retrospective media criticism, in large part ushered in by the immensely popular podcast, 'You’re Wrong About' . . . As much as MONARCH is a conspiracy-theory-thriller, inviting the possibility that an amorphous, terrible something in one’s environment might be located and made legible, it is also a story about piecing together the fuzzy impressions of childhood, watching as they form into a coherent whole the way a photo develops in a darkroom. Wuehle is masterful . . . An artisan; one senses while reading her that she has absolute control over the page—could conjure any emotion or image with startling concision, no matter how surreal or uncanny." —Lily Houston Smith, Chicago Review of Books

"A sinisterly fun novel . . . For fans of Stranger Things mixed with Little Miss Sunshine. It doesn’t sound like it works, but it sure as hell does." —Adam Vitcavage, Debutiful

"What does it mean when you’re not who you thought you were? Alternately: the categories of 'beauty queen' and 'sleeper agent' have, historically speaking, not had much overlap. Candace Wuehle’s forthcoming Monarch poses the question: what if someone could lay claim to both of those job descriptions? Throw in a touch of the occult and a bit of punk rock and you have an intriguing combination." —Tobias Carroll, Tor.com

"Fantastically strange . . . Monarch feels a bit like the folks behind You’re Wrong About teamed up with the writers of Killing Eve, and they all did some psychedelics and wrote a script together." —Molly Odintz, CrimeReads, A Most Anticipated Book

"A deeply introspective novel with a notable metaphor for reinvention after trauma in the form of a weaponized pageant girl." —Kirkus Reviews

"Readers sturdy enough to peer into this glittering, multifaceted novel will find weaponized beauty reflected back." —Publishers Weekly

“A wise, unsettling, and multifaceted masterpiece, MONARCH succeeds on all levels—as a portrait of an endearingly dysfunctional family, as a shadow history of Y2K and the hidden power structure underlying and undermining contemporary life, and as a profound exploration of the extremely dicey prospect of being a self in a body in the world. Unless you’re hiding in an underground city or frozen in a kryokammer in the desert, you'll want to run out and get this one right away!” —David Leo Rice, author of The Dodge City Trilogy, Angel House, and Drifter: Stories

“In this riddled pageantric, insomniac, photographic, and university-infused world of eating disorders, triple suicides, astral projections, enigmatic bruises, and uncontrollable impulses, Candice Wuehle’s poetic and narrative gaze on everything she Midas-touches is eyelined, eyeshadowed, polished, Norwegian lip-penciled, and loose powdered with her devilishly inventive, singularly imaginative beauty and a devastating wry sense of humor. Her brilliance in MONARCH will lacquer, enamel, and wax you and turn your mind inside out like a monarch butterfly macerated in emulsion.” —Vi Khi Nao, author of The Vegas Dilemma and Swimming with Dead Stars

"Don DeLillo can only dream of being Candice Wuehle, who's wrenched the maximalist postmodern novel from the hands of old white men and given it an enticingly feminist spin. MONARCH is a smart, weird, funny gut punch, the kind of book that will blister your brain in the best possible way." —Rafael Frumkin, author of The Comedown

Library Journal - Audio

06/01/2022

Former child beauty pageant contestant Jessica Clink lives in a surreal world of 1990s true crime zeitgeist and 1950s Stepford Wives sensibilities. Using the strange education from her professor father, the cutthroat competitive instinct instilled by her mother and her pageant coach, and the sense of rebellious ennui modeled by her riot grrrl babysitter, she slowly begins to piece together the existence of a bizarre and hungry underworld of which she is unwittingly a part. She sets out to discover the truth and to simultaneously remake herself and take apart the program that ate her and many other women alive. Prose that might snarl a reader's progress is neatly combed into order by Rebecca Lowman's smooth, low-key narration, although the vocal fry might bug some listeners. VERDICT Wuehle's debut novel is a good fit for fans of Catherynne M. Valente and other literary-bent weird spec-fic.—Chrystopher Lytal

Library Journal

04/02/2022

DEBUT Jessica Clink is many things: a depressed college dropout, a loner, a former child beauty pageant participant, and a deactivated top-secret agent in a clandestine government program called Project MONARCH. Raised by unconventional and, often neglectful, parents, Jessica relied on her (former) babysitter Christine as well as her first love Veronica for any sense of normalcy. Working in her part-time job at a photo lab, Jessica develops an alarming set of photos—graphic images of a dead young girl. These photos change something in Jessica, and she starts to remember her time as a MONARCH agent. Returning home, Christine lets her know that her mother is dead and her father is missing. With the police looking for her, Jessica is forced to flee, embarking on a one-woman crusade to figure out the truth behind her life. VERDICT Readers seeking a sci-fi action romp will be disappointed. Wuehle mixes folklore, philosophy, and the occult in this examination of memory, feminism, self, and identity. Gen X readers will appreciate the cultural milestones and infamous celebrities of the 1990s featured throughout. A circular narrative and slow plotting, however, will limit the appeal to the most adventurous literary readers. For larger fiction collections.—Lynnanne Pearson

Kirkus Reviews

2022-02-09
A former child beauty queen–turned–depressive teen grapples with her identity after learning she can’t trust her own memory.

The cover would suggest this debut novel is an espionage thriller: At 30, Jessica Clink “discovers she’s been a sleeper agent in a deep state government program.” And while this book is an exercise in finding answers, it isn’t a fast-paced, hemisphere-crossing quest story. Instead, Jessica's introspective narrative is meant to craft a cohesive story for herself from a lifetime of shredded memories—it's therapy and reinvention and confession all at the same time. Set against a 1990s backdrop—Bill Clinton, tanning beds, JonBenét Ramsey—Jessica’s first-person search for her forgotten years is a curious monologue combining teenage humor with the sterility of a psychological evaluation. Jessica begins with the easy part—stating what truths can be established: “To tell this story, the narrator became a child beauty queen.” It’s also disclosed that Jessica’s mother, Grethe, is Norwegian and a former beauty queen herself. Jessica’s post-punk–loving babysitter, Christine, is Grethe's distant relation and one of the few people allowed in the house by Jessica’s father, Dr. Clink, who is “the founder and chair of the Boredom Studies department at the Midwestern University [Jessica] dropped out of.” As Jessica provides a basic outline of her life, revealing the “subtle panic [that] undergirded the atmosphere” of her home, she drops hints at the betrayals and violence to come. Eventually, she begins to deliver revelations—like having been "trained by operatives of a shadow government” and having “several different ‘personas’ that [she] could ‘transition’ into”—with zero dramatic effect. These are mere details amid the larger violence inflicted upon her—the loss of self. Patient readers will enjoy some thrills in reaching the end of Jessica’s narrative spiral, which aggressively picks up pace in the end. But these moments feel almost out of place; they are benign vehicles pushing Jessica toward a sense of resolution. Ultimately, this story is a product of memory that is “hers. And hers alone.”

A deeply introspective novel with a notable metaphor for reinvention after trauma in the form of a weaponized pageant girl.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940178560167
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/22/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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