Jawbone
by Meghan Greeley
Paperback (Fiction)
5.5" x 8.5”
102 pages
Release Date: October 10 2023
ISBN-13: 9781998926008
A young woman has one minute to speak on a submission video to win a one-way trip to Mars, a location she views as the ultimate escape. As she barricades herself in a cottage by the sea and prepares to record, she examines her fixation on the colour red, shame, guilt, a dramatic breakup with her boyfriend, and the breakdown of her relationship with her best friend. There is another problem however, her jaw has been wired shut for a long time, and shes having trouble speaking. A passionate story about queer love and loneliness and a dazzling debut from author Meghan Greeley.
“Meghan Greeley’s Jawbone is the most tender love letter you’ll ever read. It’s about queer desire, friendship, being hurt, being open, wising up. Greeley belongs in the line up with Annie Ernaux, Marguerite Duras, Jean Rhys, Jamaica Kincaid – the writers of the great novellas that stay with us forever because they are profoundly honest. Greeley’s characters are drawn as they act, cartwheel, drink, kiss, and crash, so they are flesh and blood present in every scene, every word. Jawbone speaks of our most intimate and searing moments on earth. A spaceship to that red-hot planet, the heart. Absolutely stellar.”
“Meghan Greeley’s wonderfully rich and poignant novel follows one woman’s perilous journey of falling in and out of love culminating in her contemplating a one-way trip to Mars. This compelling tale includes blooms of jellyfish, drunk party talk about apples, how to make female friends tutorials, and slow burn takes on mortality. Using playful and evocative language, vivid imagery, and unexpected bursts of humour, this touching and powerful tale is rife with loneliness, desire, and the intrinsic beauty and pathos of being alive.”
“Originally a one-woman show, now a confident, dynamic novel, Jawbone looks at the things that silence us—especially shame—when everything in our being wants to be heard. This small but mighty book caught me with the first stanza. I read it in one sitting and then promptly returned to the beginning to read it again. What an exhilarating pleasure.”
Meghan Greeley
Meghan Greeley is a writer, editor, performer, and director originally from Corner Brook, NL. Her poetry, prose, and scripts have been published in The Stockholm Review of Literature, Ephemera, Metatrons ÖMËGÄ project, Riddle Fence, Humber Mouths 2, The Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Drama (Vol. 1), and the Playwrights Canada Press anthology Long Story Short. She was a 2016 nominee for the RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwrights Prize and was later a resident of both the Tarragon Playwrights Unit and Nightwood Theatre’s Write from the Hip program. Her play Hunger was shortlisted for the 2023 Winterset Award. Her stage plays have been produced in Toronto, Halifax, and across the island of Newfoundland. She currently lives in St. John’s, NL.
