Monarch: A Novel

"Candice Wuehle’s irresistibly weird debut novel is the kind of book that you want to start rereading immediately – not just to trace the conspiracy at its heart, but to appreciate how its kaleidoscope of beauty pageants, Y2K anxieties, and deep state machinations synthesizes into an exploration of what makes up a self. Monarch traces a young woman’s gradual awakening to her programming as an agent in an offshoot of Project MKUltra. But Wuehle is less concerned with deep state spycraft than with the question of how to differentiate who we are from who we are trained to be."