Ottessa Moshfegh

[a:Otessa Moshfegh|14555635|Otessa Moshfegh|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] is described as one of the brightest new voices in fiction, an NEA fellow, Stanford Stegner grad, and she is but this book is a hard sale. Her story is suspenseful -- I kept reading avidly late into the night -- but it is a bleak tale (and I love bleak) of a young girl who is trapped living with her overbearing ex-cop alcoholic father, working at a prison for boys, suffering an eating disorder and troubled by her lack of intimate connections until Rebecca comes to work at the prison and provides a "ticket to a new life...She was so clever and beautiful, I thought, the embodiment of all my fantasies for myself." What keeps you reading other than the edge-of-seat shenanigans at the end, are strategic references to the beautiful, loving life she lives now, fifty years later, and the superb writing: "She whirled off her coat as though in slow motion -- this is how I remember it -- and shook it like a bullfighter as she strode up the corridor toward me, hair rippling behind her, eyes like daggers shooting down straight through my heart to my guts." She notes the motto written on a pack of Pall Malls "a shield between two lions -- Per aspera ad astra. Through the thorns to the stars. That described my plight to a tee." The story winds up hopefully "not a direct line to paradise, but I believe I got on the right road, with all the appropriate trips and kinks." I am glad I read [b:Eileen|23453099|Eileen|Ottessa Moshfegh|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1423783612s/23453099.jpg|43014905] and will read her next book but it's a relief not to be the bookseller for this one.
… (mere)

this book pissed me off so bad!!!! i was genuinely excited because it seemed like it was right up my alley, but now i guess i can safely say this is WAY overhyped, as both a new york novel and a sad girl novel.

may be spoilers ahead.

1) god i HATED how she treated reva. HATED it. i hated how consistently cruel she was, and it really went too far, for me. reva was a far more compelling character to me and i understood why the protagonist would feel the way she did, but like, we get it. you've made your point. enough. i was interested in their friendship but i often felt violently unwell when she was talking about reva. i can read any sort of shock horror with a straight face but i guess i draw the line at people harbouring genuinely repugnant private thoughts about their friends. (come to think of it, my reaction reminds me of how i felt about cersei's chapters in asoiaf/affc, so i guess i just have a particular ick around reading that sort of thing.)

2) i think the language of this book is a little too contemporary to make it a convincing y2k novel. some of how moshfegh writes about technology just felt a little blasé, like she was talking about stuff that had been around forever, except in 2000 it was actually brand new/not all that common. this really detracted from my comprehension of this as being something rooted in its era. maybe it's part of the conceit, but it did not work for me.

3) i did think there were some interesting ideas at play in this book. (that said, i don't think i would've touched it if i knew how much of it was about cancer, my least favourite Theme to explore in fiction.) but, here's the kicker: you want me to sympathise with a pretty, skinny, rich WASP? i know this is HEAVILY signposted, but like, the way she's like "i'm not stupid, i don't want to give up my privilege" was an unsatisfying way of dealing with her, honestly, fetishisation of poverty. like the ending felt raaaaather common_people.mp3, you know? i LOVE an unlikable rich protagonist!! i love reading about horrible rich people like you would not believe. i love reading satires on rich people in the art world. but NONE of that worked for me here; i felt that with the protagonist, moshfegh was trying too hard to thread the needle between "she's too privileged" and "she is genuinely lost and miserable." an interesting balance to strike, but not the way it was done here. and everything about the art world was SO extreme, so cartoonish, that it was hard to buy into the satire. like girl your lifestyle is another side of the same coin...

anyway at least it was a quick read… (mere)