Juliet Escoria

When Juliet finally comes to High School, she has high expectations. Since she is assigned to many honours classes, her talents sure will soon be seen by her teachers. However, instead of concentrating on her educational goals, Juliet is completely preoccupied with what others think of her, why she does not fit in and why she even lost the only friend she had in middle school. She struggles more and more and enters a spiral of drugs and self-harm until she, at last, cries for help and is brought to a hospital. With changing school, she hopes to find back to her old self, but the mental illness she has to recognize as a part of her personality, keeps her at the edge between life and death.

I have read several novels about teenagers developing mental illnesses and struggling to come back to something like a normal life. Thus, I was keen on reading Juliet Escoria’s novel which comes with high praise and was highly anticipated. Sadly, the protagonist didn’t really convince me and I hardly could relate with her and her fate.

The biggest problem for me was that throughout the novel I had the impression that the medicine to treat bipolar disorder or depression is somehow glorified and paralleled with “ordinary” drugs that are consumed by teenagers, such as alcohol, marihuana or any type of pills. Also the fact that having sex while being completely out of your mind was repeatedly portrayed as something you should go for left me a bit wondering. Since Juliet does not really seem to be willing to overcome her addictions or to find a way of living with her diagnosis and the side effects that come with it, I also did not find the novel helpful in any way.

Well, there were some entertaining parts in it, it was even funny at times. And surely it shows that absolutely anybody might end up with mental struggles and that you cannot really do something about it. The tone was adequate for a teenager, even though she often sounded a bit older than just the 14 she was at the beginning.… (mere)

Witch Hunt by Juliet Escoria



Juliet Escoria’s first poetry collection, Witch Hunt, picks up where her first book, the story collection Black Cloud left off. That is, in a semi-autobiographical universe in which the author’s humanity is constantly on display. This isn’t woman magically ennobled, a made-up version of Juliet Escoria, heroine, but a largely unadorned testament that puts Escoria at the center of her own experiences without spending too much time moralizing on where she finds herself, what she does, or what’s done to her.

Witch Hunt’s presentation is fresh, the book’s architecture and delivery blurring the lines between poetry and short fiction, nonfiction and novel. From section titles like “Bipolar National Anthem” to poem cycles like “Haikus for Horse Haters” you get that there’s an air of comedy here, or if not comedy a sort of bemused acceptance of life’s insanity. Though many of these poems are delivered in blunt language that defies you to find much beauty in the world it presents, that’s by design. This is a collection that eschews “prettiness” in favor of truth. Perhaps this is a statement on gender, the title evocative of the stalked woman pursued for her innate beauty, her very femininity. In the face of that continuing hunt, these poems respond with brutal honesty.

The quality that sets this above other similarly confessional collections is its voice—infectious, reflective, and matter-of-fact—a voice that grows in power with re-readings, suggesting not only that the collection holds multiple layers of meaning beyond the superficial, but that this is a writer with a lot more to say. From semi-madness (medicated and not-so) through substance abuse, physical abuse, suicidal episodes, and the overarching struggle to simply fit into the world, Escoria displays a shocking lack of self-pity, the rare, fundamental truthfulness that assures you this is not a slick piece of personal advertising designed to make her look or feel better than she is. This is Juliet Escoria’s reality—her truth—on the page.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/kbaumeister/2016/06/the-nervous-breakdowns-re...… (mere)