Where's Molly

Content Warning: This novel includes graphic violence, murder, sexual assault, sexual abuse, and drug overdose.

Beauty and horror in Where’s Molly? are often mutually dependent; each highlight the other. The setting of the novel in Reaper Canyon, Montana establishes a background of mountain ranges and nature, contrasted with the “Reaper” in the name, associated with death. Embodied in Molly’s character, the bitemark by her eye reminds her and others of the horrors she experienced, but it also highlights her green eyes, drawing attention to her beauty. The narrative itself plays with the ideas of beauty and horror in unconventional ways, such as the sexual encounters in Molly’s barn, where she and Cage are covered in the blood of a violent criminal while they explore each other’s bodies. The novel rejects traditional contrast of horror and beauty, instead mixing and juxtaposing the two alongside one another to suggest that appreciating beauty requires coming to terms with horror, too.

The key elements of horror and beauty in the text focus on Molly and Cage’s attraction for one another. Molly comments that Cage’s “beauty is wicked, and I hate the way it makes my heart flutter” (43), imbuing traditional attraction with the idea of evil or cruelty.