5 must-read womens books like Mona by Pola Oloixarac

If you liked the womens plot in Mona by Pola Oloixarac , here is a list of 5 books like this:

Similar categories in Mona Awad's Rouge book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult

"If I had beauty, I decided then, I would never throw it away. I would never give it up."

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"I mean, we all have our dark days. Very dark days, sometimes. When our demons come out to play. No one lives entirely in the light, right?"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

"That I can’t protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can’t help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I’m trying to…"

-Mona Awad, Rouge

Similar categories in Ling Ma's Bliss Montage book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult

"To live is to exist within time. To remember is to negate time."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"It doesn't take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone's gaze."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"Maybe you don't know that you're wounded until you receive the salve. The salve that makes everything come back."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

"It was a time when the future could have been anything, been anywhere. It was so open that it could actually crush her."

-Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

Similar categories in Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary

"I took a bite of a Bloody Ploughman. Even the flesh was red. 'Bloody,' Carral said. 'Nice colour,' I answered. 'It looks sinful. I bet that was the apple Eve ate, you know, in the Bible, the forbidde…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

"I'll tell you the fairy tale of the apple. Eve ate the apple, and then Adam came and did so too. Afterwards the apple was forgotten, and it was assumed that it rolled away in the grass while Adam and…"

-Jenny Hval, Paradise Rot

Similar categories in Eliza Clark's Penance book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• contemporary

"Do you know what happened to her already? Did you catch it in the papers? Are you local? Did you know her? Did you see it on the internet? Did some website the trawls local news for the worst details…"

-Eliza Clark, Penance

Similar categories in Ainslie Hogarth's Motherthing book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult
• fiction
• contemporary

"Too much human touching will change a thing."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"A Good Woman butchers her meat properly, without cruelty."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"I can save you. With Secrets of a Famous Chef I can save you."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

"I bubble again with blinding-hot, spine-severing cumshitkill."

-Ainslie Hogarth, Motherthing

Similar categories in Alexandra Tanner's Worry book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult

Similar categories in Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• feminism
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult

"It is toxic. I am familiar"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"Happiness or safety. Or isn't that the same thing?"

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"I never came with him. I never felt safe enough to."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

"The world is made for couples. Even the unhappy ones."

-Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

Similar categories in Melissa Broder's Death Valley book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult

"My body is the real problem here. If I could be bodiless - or at least, senseless - I’d be better off."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"This is the problem with human relationships: you come to a person with one feeling and they’re having another."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"I am going to die out here. I might. I could. Die. All this time I should have been practising for dying. What was I doing instead? Reading reviews for sweatpants."

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

"Stop placing so much value on the known, I tell myself. Fake like this is the hero’s journey. It’s good to get lost. Good for the soul. But how lost is the good amount of lost? If I die here, is that…"

-Melissa Broder, Death Valley

Similar categories in Dizz Tate's Brutes book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• contemporary

"to be loved, was just to be watched"

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"We feel chased. It doesn't matter if it's only by our own shadows."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"and now I think that to humiliate a woman is the only way some men know how to love one."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

"To be loved was just to be watched, or in my case, to imagine you are loved is to imagine you are watched all the time."

-Dizz Tate, Brutes

Similar categories in Rachel Cusk's Parade book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• feminism
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels
• adult

"He knew that [his work] embodied change, and he wasn’t interested in change. He was interested in the fragments that change leaves behind in its storming passage toward the future."

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"Not to be understood is effectively to be silenced, but not understanding can in its turn legitimise that silence, can illuminate one’s own unknowability. Art is the pact of individuals denying socie…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"Sanity and insanity were not opposites but rather were the two faces of inanimate matter, the point at which the existence of consciousness can get no further in breaking down the existence of substa…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

"The impulse to have a child is very often a response to the woman’s own childhood, as though her childhood has left her incomplete, or has taken a part of her that she is driven to find again. The st…"

-Rachel Cusk, Parade

Similar categories in Sophie Mackintosh's Cursed Bread book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• adult
• fiction
• contemporary

"Pain becomes an animal, walking at your side. Pain becomes a home you can carry with you."

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

"The world is only ever one breach away from being unpeeled entirely, one tragedy, one glimpse behind the curtain."

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

"I've been looked at in pity and in fear and I've learned that the only way to really be seen is through desire. To be looked at and found whole. Found alive."

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

"I don't want a book, I don't want the trouble of it, he said. I don't want to get involved, I just want to watch what's going on. I know what's going to happen and then it happens, and I can go outsi…"

-Sophie Mackintosh, Cursed Bread

Similar categories in Pola Oloixarac's Mona book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• magical realism
• feminism
• spanish literature
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels
• adult

"There was a niche sort of glamour to it, like being a rare specimen of an endangered species—as though her myste- rious DNA were a tiara encrusted with rare pearls, and the universities each a mas- s…"

-Pola Oloixarac, Mona

Similar categories in Natasha Brown's Assembly book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult

"I traded in my life for a sliver of middle-class comfort. For a future."

-Natasha Brown, Assembly

"Explain air. Convince a sceptic. Prove it's there. Prove what cant be seen."

-Natasha Brown, Assembly

"Because they watch (us). They're taught how to, from school. They are taught to view our bodies (selves) as objects."

-Natasha Brown, Assembly

"Everything now is profit. I am what we’ve always been to the empire: pure, fucking profit. A natural resource to exploit and exploit, denigrate, and exploit."

-Natasha Brown, Assembly

Similar categories in Marlowe Granados's Happy Hour book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels
• adult

"Being unattached is exhausting."

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

"being a muse is not for the weak"

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

"Money was limited, but my taste was not."

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

"isn't a vacation when you forget what day it is?"

-Marlowe Granados, Happy Hour

Similar categories in Jen Beagin's Big Swiss book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult

"¿Habla más de un idioma?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"You bullied other bullies,"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"she’d always been less of a shit-talker and more of a shit-thinker"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

"At least I know where the hell I am and what’s happening. Which way is north?"

-Jen Beagin, Big Swiss

Similar categories in Lillian Fishman's Acts of Service book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult

"We love what disturbs us if it chooses us and tell us how we matter."

-Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service

"How can a body be safe when it's only a body? How can we expect that no stranger will be tempted to torch an empty house?"

-Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service

"Somehow, [...] I grew up talking about sex as this thing women should have however they wanted. Sexual freedom as this great sort of penacle beyond morality, or anything provincial. So I am supposed …"

-Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service

Similar categories in Sheila Heti's Pure Colour book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels
• adult

"And what opens one heart opens many."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"The body becomes a woman and it cannot turn back."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"And a glimpse into one heart is a glimpse into many."

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

"Why did it seem like the only way to live-was to disobey?"

-Sheila Heti, Pure Colour

Similar categories in Elif Batuman's Either/Or book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels
• adult

"I'm going to become whatever I was going to become."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

"Fiona Apple's album made me more immediately depressed than any other music I remembered hearing."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

"That had probably been written by a professor. I recognized the professor's characteristic delight at not imparting information."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

"I was going to remember, or discover, where everything came from. I was going to do the subtle, monstrous thing where you figured out what you were doing, and why."

-Elif Batuman, Either/Or

Similar categories in Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• magical realism
• fiction
• contemporary
• adult

"The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"Maybe there must always be two of us—our real selves and the ones we create to survive in the world as it is."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"When you're young, every part of life seems big and monumental. Once older you can see it for what it is: smaller pieces of a larger game you have no choice but to play."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

"If the brain is elastic and memory is faulty, maybe all of these stories are wrong. Maybe it happened a different way altogether. Maybe I was happy and I just forget that now."

-Sarah Rose Etter, Ripe

Similar categories in Amina Cain's Indelicacy book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• literary fiction
• feminism
• fiction
• contemporary
• womens
• novels
• adult

"I hated March more than any other month, with its promises of warmth that never came"

-Amina Cain, Indelicacy

"I would listen to a bird cry, or the cat and the dog scratching around. In those moments I felt like a giant ear."

-Amina Cain, Indelicacy

"In books I found even more strongly my desire to write, to write back to them and their jagged, perfect words. I found life that ran close to my own"

-Amina Cain, Indelicacy

"Why is empty space a comfort and a relief? It's not because I project myself there; it's because I can't. It shows me my projections, but they haven't left my mind. Empty space remains empty, always.…"

-Amina Cain, Indelicacy

Similar categories in Lucie Elven's The Weak Spot book and Pola Oloixarac's Mona

• adult fiction
• literary fiction
• fiction
• contemporary
• novels

"I felt like what he said was a thin cloth he held over what he meant, letting me see its shadow or its shape protruding. If I pushed at the veil, the mystery under the surface would poke out."

-Lucie Elven, The Weak Spot