Shut Up You’re Pretty is a debut novel from Téa Mutonji, published in 2019. It was the first novel published under the VS. Books imprint, curated and edited by Vivek Shraya for work by new and emerging Indigenous or black writers or writers of colour. For a debut, this book is very well decorated, being shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust,  Publishing Triangle Award Winner, and a Trillium Prize. 

So I think this is a case of “its not the book, its me”. For one reason or another, I didn’t connect with this book, and I can’t put my finger on why. I often found myself thinking back to Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez, which takes in the same Toronto neighbourhood, and covers similar topics, but which I connected with more. Looking at the individual storeis in Shut Up, I thought they were well written. There was vivid imagery, they were well-developed and show the external and internal influences on Loli’s life, but as a collection it just didn’t connect with me.

For a book to carry us forward, Loli feels like just that -- carried forward through time. The stories ended without the reader seeing the outcomes or growth from each, but Loli is in the next story, present, but never reflective, we don’t see how she got from ‘there’ to ‘here’. 

All that being said, I’ll definitely check out out any future novels from Mutonji as there was a lot going for Shut Up You’re Pretty and I think this was a book that maybe just wasn’t right for me at the time.