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ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022 according to Nylon, Lambda Literary, Bustle, LitHub, Debutiful, CrimeReads, Thrillist, Tor.com, and Daily Nexus.
Wuehle is 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, The Chicago Review of Books
Poet 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.
Monarch is ultimately a story about stories: of Jessica's erasure and reinvention, of the Norwegian folklore that Grethe carried from her homeland, of true crime narratives that tell us that no one is more perfect than a dead girl, of memory and trauma and consciousness. Jessica's testimony reminds us that "nothing — no memory, impression, emotion, or idea — is ever lost." We can always remember who we are, even when the forces around us demand that we forget.
—Kristen Martin, NPR
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Wuehle pursues her gonzo premise with satirical gusto, mixing together some curious brew of Robert Ludlum and Don DeLillo. Somehow, both worlds fit with this lively debut.—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
Intoxicating and strange... Addicting as it is heartbreaking.—Sophia June, Nylon
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In her first novel, poet Candice Wuehle writes a sinisterly fun novel about a former pageant queen who uncovers the dark side of the government. This is for fans of Stranger Things mixed with Little Miss Sunshine. It doesn’t sound like it works, but it sure as hell does.—Debutiful
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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. — Karensa Cadenas, The Thrillist
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Child beauty pageants collide with a CIA mind control program in this bonkers debut novel from poet Wuehle (Death Industrial Complex)...Readers sturdy enough to peer into this glittering, multifaceted novel will find weaponized beauty reflected back.—Publishers Weekly
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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
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Throw in a touch of the occult and a bit of punk rock and you have an intriguing combination.—Tobias Carroll, Tor.com
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This book is fantastically strange. Jessica Clink is damaged enough from her childhood career as a pageant queen, but could she also be a government sleeper agent? That might explain some of the dreams she’s been having, and the odd behavior of her closest friends and family, all of whom seem to be in on the plan to control her and her powers. 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.—CrimeReads
The cryptic worlds of Hanna and Stranger Things mingle with the dark humor of Dare Me in this debut novel about a teen beauty queen who discovers she’s been a sleeper agent in a deep state government program, and whose love for a fellow pageant girl sparks an underworld journey to the truth of her being.
After waking up with a strange taste in her mouth and mysterious bruises, former child beauty queen 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 on idleness, affect, and crime known as “The Devil’s Workshop”), Jessica uncovers a disquieting connection between her former life as a pageant 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 beauty queen turned spokesperson for a Norwegian cryochamber device built to halt the aging process for suburban housewives). With the help of Christine (a black-lipsticked riot grrrl babysitter and confidante), Jessica sets out to take down Project MONARCH and the operatives who programmed her. More importantly, she must discover if her first love, fellow teen queen Veronica Marshall, was genuine or yet another deep state plant.
Iconic true crime stories of the ’90s (Lorena Bobbitt, Nicole Brown Simpson, and JonBenét Ramsey) merge with Jessica’s own past, triggering traumatic revelations and the radical potential of feminist vengeance. Drawing on 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?
Soft Skull, March 29, 2022
Contact: Thompson Literary Agency
Film Rights: Gotham Group
Foreign Rights: 2Seas Agency
Audiobook: Penguin Random House
Advanced Praise for MONARCH
In this riddled pageantric, insomniac, photographic, and university-infused world of eating disorders, triple suicides, astral projections, enigmatic bruises, uncontrollable impulses, Candice Wuehle’s poetic and narrative gaze on everything she Midas-touches is eyelined, eyeshadowed, polished, Norwegian lip-penciled, and loose powered 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
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
This book is really quite sinister, and I mean that in the Latin sense--MONARCH takes the left-hand path through a chilling (and, if you're honest with yourself, quite real) landscape as Jessica, a decommissioned MK Ultra-esque beauty queen traces back to her origins as such. Along the way, she has to tell the true from the false, which can be difficult when you have a closet full of alters and a lot of gruesome off-label memories.
Underneath it all is a question you can probably relate to even if you aren't the progeny of a cryogenically preserved mother and a father who lectures on Boredom Studies: How do we know which of our reactions belong to us? How can we tell apart the conditioned self from the one we actually live with, especially when we've been trauma-trained into not looking too closely at certain facts? What happens when our frozen selves start to thaw?
If you've always been suspicious of the institutions of childhood, beauty, and sentimentality, this book is for you. If you crave a frosty narrative voice with the whip and torque of a bitchy gymnast, this book is for you. It will make you smarter. And it will also upset your schema for the world--but you'll be glad, I promise.—Sarah Elaine Smith, author of Marilou is Everywhere