Eugenie Montague’s ‘Swallow the Ghost’ latest selection of El Paso Matters Book Club
Eugenie Montague describes her book, "Swallow the Ghost," as a hybrid novel that mixes genres that will resonate with readers in the borderland and beyond.
The New York Times calls it a "coolly crafty debut" that "concerns a literary crime novel fashioned in part from tweets on various fictional accounts."
The debut novel by Montague, a Los Angeles transplant now living in El Paso, takes a unique approach in storytelling, intertwining tweets, Reddit, podcasts and other social media to weave together a murder mystery told in three different sections.
The first centers around Jane, a marketer who's helping pretentious crime author Jeremy put together a story about a fictional girl's disappearance using multiple fake social media accounts. Their lives at times merge into a relationship, complicating matters.
The second section finds Jane murdered, as Jesse, a journalist turned public investigator, looks into her death. Jesse's story takes its own turn, especially as he cares for his mother, who has dementia.
It's this second section that has earned Montague the most praise, with the New York Times in its review calling it the most compelling.
"It's narrated by a character whose life — problems, compromises, vanities, desires — takes on color and dimension in ways Jane's does not," the review states.
While the novel's concept at times "feels uneven," it is "filled with beautiful prose that's hard to forget, and poses intriguing questions about how someone is remembered," the Associated Press said in its book review.
The third section focuses on Jeremy at the center of a podcast interview in which he describes his life after Jane's death – including dealing with rumors that he killed her.
"Swallow the Ghost," published this fall by Mulholland Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group and Little, Brown and Company, is the latest selection of the El Paso Matters Book Club.
Montague, an attorney who loves book clubs and plays tennis, has a law degree from Duke University and a master's in fiction writing from UC Irvine. Originally from New York, Montague has lived in many places, moving to El Paso from Los Angeles about nine years ago with her husband. They have two kids.
Her short fiction has been published by NPR, "Mid-American Review," "Faultline," "Fiction Southeast," Amazon and others.
"Why write?" Montague is recently quoted as saying in an alumni publication of her college prep boarding school in Connecticut. "I can't not. I've always wanted to write."
