Exquisite Mariposa

Starred review from August 1, 2019
A bighearted, eccentric millennial navigates her messy coming-of-age in Los Angeles. Duncan's unique debut follows a fictional Fiona Alison Duncan, a writer who moves from New York City to Los Angeles. In LA, Fiona sublets a room in an apartment called La Mariposa and begins dreaming up a reality show starring herself and her broke, beautiful, 20-something roommates. In their search for "the Real" (an almost unattainable state of living), Fiona pitches the show as "A real Real World" before realizing the inherent inauthenticity: "But the means I sought to make our dreams known were too mixed up in the Dream. To be seen, moneyed, on-screen." So she breaks the contract and writes a novel (this novel) instead. Along with thoughtful insights about capitalism, feminism, and politics, the novel is full of fads and trends: Instagram, social media branding, astrology, vegan ice cream, and nutritional yeast to name a few. In one clever moment, Duncan addresses the way trends exist within greater power structures: "Astrology's gone in and out of style before; right now, it's peaking in popularity, because people are desperate for a meaning system more nourishing than capitalism." The novel also ruminates on the knottiness of money, work, female ambition, art, and power. Fiona is a writer who struggles with her artistic impulse to capture the world in a medium that will always fall short. She writes that "what [she] made was never as beautiful as the reality it reached toward," and yet she tries. The novel is highbrow and lowbrow; about everything and nothing; and wholly of this particular cultural moment--in a good way. If there were such a thing as a "millennial novel," this is how it should be defined: chaotic, earnest, honest, and curious. Duncan has written a sharp and astute work of metafiction An original, insightful debut that doesn't quite fit in a box--but checks them all.

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August 19, 2019
Duncan’s disappointing metafictional debut follows narrator Fiona Alison Duncan—who shares the same name and some biographical details with the author—a woman in her late 20s who’s just made the cross-country move from New York to Los Angeles. In L.A., she finds a communal living situation at a house named La Mariposa, which comes complete with a revolving door of roommates, most of them women or femme, all endlessly fascinating to Fiona. Fiona is immediately struck with the idea to pitch her and her roommates to a producer as a reality TV show—“The Real World meets Instagram,” as a producer puts it. But the longer Fiona lives in L.A., the more she yearns to live fully in the Real, “a mode of perception” whose defining characteristic is “not trying.” So she embarks on a loosely transformative journey, culminating in a road trip to Toronto, taking the exact route her parents took while her mother was pregnant with her. Ping-ponging from dildos to astrology to capitalism and cultural capital, Duncan’s novel is suffused with trite observations passed off as wisdom. This chatty, unfocused story never finds its footing.

November 1, 2019

DEBUT The narrator of Canadian author Duncan's debut, who shares her creator's name, has recently moved to Los Angeles from New York City and taken up residence with a set of constantly changing roommates. She and her roommates, other young women, are searching for authenticity while fulfilling their artistic impulses. Fiona's enthusiasm for communal living drives her to pitch their living situation as a possible reality TV show; Duncan even structures her novel in episodes rather than chapters. However, when Fiona realizes that she's made a mistake, she breaks the contract and sets out to write her own novel. The result is a coming-of-age work that satisfies with Fiona's many, often brilliant observations about relationships, art, drug use, astrology, sexuality, and capitalism. Episode 9: "Angels Flight" is a particularly well-written exposition on her attempt at "living in the Real." VERDICT As metafiction, this work will ultimately disappoint those seeking (if not longing for) a discernible, less self-conscious narrative, but it's a provocative, original, and even chaotic understanding of reality and the rapid social, technological, and economic changes facing everyone, not just millennials.--Faye Chadwell, Oregon State Univ., Corvallis

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