A Touch of Jen

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Who among us hasn’t stalked a crush on social media — then brought our girlfriend in on our obsession and let our role-playing fantasies leak into our reality, disintegrating social boundaries and ultimately rending the fabric of the universe?

This was clear when several characters told Remy to “reject the tyranny of money over [his] life,” a line that was painfully real to how many perceive manifestation and “energy” work. Once I finished, I sat there staring at the very last page for at least three minutes trying to decide whether or not I hated it. Indirectly, Remy’s desire and the magnitude of his “fate” have truly actualized this monster, which destroys his apartment and the two people in his life who have been genuine friends to him, Jake and Carla. The one bright spot in Remy and Alicia's faded relationship is their mutual obsession with Jen, a beautiful former coworker-turned-influencer.Unlike other people in the story he doesn’t seem to have family, friends or much of a personality other than being angry all the time. Would definitely reccommend reading this book especially if you love authors like Ottessa Moshfegh and Gillian Flynn. While A Touch of Jen starts as a typical millennial literary realist novel, in the second half it becomes a full-blown horror novel featuring plenty of “stylized violence,” as Remy would say. B. Fisketjon, “a healer, lifestyle expert, and spiritual counselor,” the book describes manifesting the energy of the universe to become the ultimate version of yourself.

I predicted the ending, because it was the ending that made sense, what I didn't predict was the absolutely insane way Beth Morgan got us there. Even the characters most authentic are still seemingly inauthentic when brought under the microscope. Honestly, I liked the storyline right up until the last quarter of the book and things just get really weird when it gets science fiction style. It’s a good concept, and fun, but much lighter than I expected, and ultimately just not a good match for my tastes.His previous analysis of social interactions transforms into a different type of interpretation, this time, interpreting coincidences and others’ words and actions as “signifiers” trying to point him towards his “consummate result,” or his fate. EXCERPTS AND LINKS MAY BE USED, PROVIDED THAT FULL AND CLEAR CREDIT IS GIVEN TO BRITTANY COLE AND SLANTED SPINES WITH APPROPRIATE AND SPECIFIC DIRECTION TO THE ORIGINAL CONTENT.

Hearing the advice from The Apple Bush felt eerily familiar: all of the language used around self-help is now mainstream and no longer derided as hippie “woo-woo,” rebranded instead in masculinist and capitalist terms as efficiency, productivity, and personal success. Fun though the end was, the more I think about this book, the more I think that the movie “Save Yourselves! While they may have once helped with a few practical and timeless guidelines (shout-out to journaling for being the MVP of my mental health), there is never a single way to become the best version of yourself. Sigh, this book is probably getting a better rating than I feel about it because of its parts, not its sum. Then, in her most revealing moments, we see Jen as the pretentious, self-righteous, and inconsiderate individual she is, which still appears like a performance because her bitchiness is often a power move intended to make others feel small and insecure juxtaposed to her.The way the dialogue is written, the blunt and ambivalent attitudes of Remy and Alicia, every interaction and every scene has a slight unsettling nature to it. I really thot Remy was losing his mind and we were gonna get a nice wrapped up ending of what was really going on.

This deliciously vicious novel, Beth Morgan's debut, is probably best described as what might happen if Ingrid Goes West took place atop the Hellmouth of Sunnydale. It’s especially cringey because the main characters lack self-awareness while sort of also being hyper self-aware.However, the most tragic and apparent example of this is Alicia, who is willing to discard her own identity to adopt anything Jen-like she can. Every Signifier (lol inside joke if you read the book) was so meticulously chosen that once you ruminated over the ending of the book, it does make a lot of sense.