Does life owe us just because we work hard? ‘Mona’ explores
‘Sad millennial’ protagonist shows answer doesn’t come easy
The Great Recession of 2008 is the setting of Elizabeth Gonzalez James’ debut novel, “Mona at Sea.”
Her protagonist, Mona Mireles, is a newly minted college graduate with a degree in finance. She travels to New York for her first day at a
Wall Street firm only to find the place has been shuttered. The crushing moment is captured on a news video that goes viral and makes her infamous in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz., as the “sad millennial.”
Mona, sometimes petulant (she says into the camera that she ate her veggies and worked hard in school), believes she deserves much more for her years of sacrifice as an honor roll student.
Mona is an overachiever, but she also is overly critical, and “Mona at Sea” becomes a long diatribe about how unattractive everyone else is. As a member of a job-seekers workshop hosted by her church, she is merciless in her assessments of every other participant. She seems to think she is the only one cut out for a high-paying job and eschews any opportunities to find gainful employment.
Mona lives with her family — her parents and a younger brother. Things at home are falling apart. Her parents’ marriage is on the skids, and Mona’s trials and tribulations — her heavy drinking, slovenliness and incessant verbal jabs — do nothing to quell the tensions.
In the first-person narration, Mona tells us that her father is Mexican American and her mother is white. Being the “only Latina” in various contexts of her life doesn’t emerge in substantive ways in the narrative as part of her conflict, but it simmers as part of a deeply rooted tension in her family. Her parents work in higher education, but Mona perceives the precarious nature of their positions.
At one point, Mona says her light skin color is “in contradiction” with her last name, but we don’t move much beyond this superficial assessment or the ways in which the recession shed light on racial and ethnic disparities.
Mona’s best friend, Ashley, has undergone weight-loss surgery and has other issues. She is also true to herself and follows the dreams she feels passionate about. Mona resents her for this. She tries to calm her anxiety, jealousy and frustration by cutting — a dark secret she keeps to herself for most of the novel.
Mona may be mostly unlikable and an unreliable narrator of her own story, but she’s engaging insofar as we want her to succeed as a member of the too-often-disparaged millennial generation. We want her to shake off her self-consciousness and her lack of empathy for everyone around her, especially her mother and father, whose signs of aging (they are in their mid- to late 50s) she is always quick to note.
Mona may be an overachiever, but she’s also immature because she really believes the world owes her something and that she already has done enough to start reaping the benefits of her good grades.
The sad millennial grieves for a job she never really had. She never made it inside the building that day in New York.
Though Mona does apply for more than 400 jobs, we know the hunt is fruitless because she is mired in the belief that she needs to be in finance — an occupation that fits her entrenched idea of what it means to be successful.
The fact is that she has not been very smart about the goals she has pursued or the ways she has pursued them. She is biding her time because she has no idea what she really wants to do with her life.
The more she ignores what is right in front of her, what can be her hardwon salvation, the more we stay with the story. Sticking it out just to see how she could be capable of changing is a bit of an endurance test as Mona advances and regresses until she arrives where she must, not just to survive but to find some measure of happiness along the way.
Through it all, Mona maintains her trenchant and wry observations about family, friendship and love.
Does life owe us something just because we work hard? The novel sets Mona on a path where she can ask other, more meaningful questions without expecting easy answers.