‘Swanna in Love’ Review: Girlhood at Its Most Grotesque

In her first novel in over ten years, Jennifer Belle offers a particularly honest and almost unpalatable version of adolescence. Prioritizing reality over pleasantries, “Swanna in Love” depicts female growth emerging from rather rotten experiences.

“Swanna in Love” details the trials and tribulations of Swanna Swain, a 14-year-old girl whose expectations for her triumphant final weeks of summer are increasingly squashed. When her mother comes to pick her up from summer camp instead of her father, Swanna must stick it out sleeping in a truck bed with her brother instead of her luxurious New York City apartment. In hopes of both escaping her situation and finding love, Swanna seduces Dennis, a forty-year-old father, and gets what she wants. Belle has stated that at least the first half of the premise is based on a real experience she had growing up.

Thus, it makes sense that the best feature of “Swanna in Love” is Swanna’s unyielding and hyper-specific teenage voice. Her 14-year-old mind frequently spirals into tangents, discussing childhood memories and reflecting on the current state of her fractured family. These tangents create a wonderfully naturalistic expository form. Never do these flashbacks feel overly explanatory or hamfisted. Instead, they entertain while simultaneously explaining how Swanna ended up at these crossroads.

Previous hints of her unhappy family life and her dread for the incoming school year gradually become clear as Swanna recalls these richly textured vignettes. Every interaction between Swanna and her younger brother is particularly delightful — these moments provide a gentle reprieve from the rest of the novel’s darker themes. However, some tangents can also seem needlessly unsavory. For example, Swanna recalling her history with wetting herself feels indulgent. To Belle’s credit, what they lack in tastefulness they make up for in characterization. These details add to that sense of Swanna’s teenage awkwardness. Intrusive thoughts about her body feel as natural as the thoughts she has about her mother’s infidelity. Furthermore, this realism ensures that the more absurd elements of the plot remain grounded. For example, Swanna’s mother’s new boyfriend Borislav — a broke artist who makes unappealing sculptures out of tar — initially seems laughably ridiculous. Yet, Swanna herself refusing to accept his story as truth acknowledges the reader’s concerns and assures them of his reality.

In addition to her interior voice, Swanna herself shimmers with life. Moments feel frustrating but never insurmountable, and Swanna tackles every challenge with headstrong determination. Every situation is a challenge waiting to be solved with Swanna’s wealth of knowledge from teen magazines and secondary school. Swanna may think the world revolves around her, but her dynamism makes that true in some form. She makes readers root for her, even when what she wants isn’t healthy. This relatability softens the blow of the book’s more stomach-churning content, and hooks the reader along for her journey.

“Swanna in Love” deftly captures the contradictory feelings of powerlessness and hopefulness in teenhood. Chafing against her lack of agency, Swanna turns to seduction as a method of escape. Unfortunately, her limited experience means she cannot conceptualize how her effort to assert sexual autonomy does not make her immune to the untoward intentions of an older man. She views her sexual experiences as intrinsically indicative of adulthood — and thus fundamentally at odds with someone perceiving her as a child. At the book’s most tragic, Swanna cries, believing she forced him to molest her by lying about her age — something the text itself contradicts knowingly when other characters acknowledge how young she looks.

The book never fully condemns Dennis, instead leaving Swanna in this miserable position. Books may not be moral codes to live our lives by, but this final scene is almost too heartbreaking for comfort. Leaving Dennis sans punishment or even closure feels rather unsatisfactory to Swanna’s overall character development. Instead of Swanna learning about her own vulnerability, this ending suggests that instead Swanna just made the incorrect decision with her boundless authority, which leaves the reader miserable and unsatisfied. Yet at the same time, Swanna’s feelings are, depressingly, within the realm of reality. It is difficult to deny that this predatory behavior exists. Yet, ending with this conclusion is less of an acknowledgement of the systems of abuse but rather a lack of acknowledgment of her suffering.

“Swanna in Love” never holds back from heavy content, but its peppy teenage tone prevents the book from feeling too burdensome. The serious content is not unnecessary but stays unresolved, leaving the reader and Swanna unfulfilled. However, the balance of ludicrous and somber content is a fine balancing act that Belle succeeds at. Coming to know Swanna is a treat, and it’s only through Belle’s deft hand that readers leave wanting so much better for her.