Frankenstein Book Report: Nine Moons by Gabriela Wiener (tr: Jessica Powell)

If Angela Garbes mind melded with Samantha Irby and Jami Attenberg, and wrote specifically about sex, and oh there's a baby somewhere in there.

I LOVE THIS BOOK. I want everyone to read it. I want to learn Spanish so I can read everything the Peruvian author Gabriela Wiener has to say. My Frankenstein Book Report (to recap: premised on my making a composite description of a book by placing it in a cultural ecosystem instead of line-analyzing the actual book) for Nine Moons is less composite and mostly a paean. Get this book get this book get this book.

Nine Moons [(c 2009, Spanish) Gabriela Wiener. (c 2020, English) Jessica Powell, Restless Books] is a pregnancy memoir written by a self-described gonzo sex journalist/essayist who also authors smut under the pen name Ada Franela. She moves from Peru to Barcelona with her dude in time to experience the magic but mostly the “abyss” of pregnancy. I’m just gonna quote from early in the book so you get the idea:

Women play all the time with the great power that has been conferred upon us: it’s fun to think about reproducing. Or not reproducing. Or walking around in a sweet little dress with a round belly underneath that will turn into a baby to cuddle and spoil When you’re fifteen, the idea is fascinating. It attracts you like a piece of chocolate cake. When you’re thirty, the possibility attracts you like an abyss.

OK and here’s a practical question:

How is it that no one has yet created a designer drug for pregnant women? Prenatal ecstasy, LSD for expectant mothers, something like that.

I legitimately thought when I was in my labor room, that there should be a closet of sex toys—it’s all I wanted, to take my mind off the visceral pain. But yes, hallucinogenics would’ve been as welcome, and candy-flipping dildos with psilocybes would’ve been the best.

On migrating to the Iberian empire:

My child: Europe is the best place for a Latin American to starve to death and drink good wine. Welcome.

“Welcome.” Wiener’s mom jokes kill me. As does her writing career:

My last piece for Primera Línea was an article called “Do You Want to Have Sex With Me?” It was about fictitiously proposing sex to all sorts of men, and recording their reactions. I stationed myself at midnight in the doorway to the bathroom at a disco called Fellini to offer myself to every man who passed by. A large number of those who responded said that they never had sex on the first date. When I got home, I wrote that you had to woo the men of today with flowers and chocolates. I was one month pregnant.

I want to be friends with this person.