The literary equivalent of a Bosch painting: a lot of wallowing in the grotesque, giving an overall impression of a topsy turvy world where everything is corrupt and hopeless. In style, content, setting, it feels more like an allegory than a novel.
https://donut-donut.dreamwidth.org/865612.html ( )

Absolutely weird, incredibly vile, and entertaining as hell.

I can't wait to read scathing reviews about how gross and twisted Moshfegh is. I'm also happy to report that this is so much better than Death in Her Hands... thank god. ( )

it's medieval slice of life, and life is terrible ( )

Cruel parable that reminded me of ‘Harvest’ by Jim Crace, also situated in a village lorded over by a wealthy, uncaring landlord, in the Middle Ages, in a story that is beset with incest, rape, pillage, hunger, and drought.

The story is related in five parts following the seasons, starting and ending with Spring. We follow Marek, a deformed bastard of an incestuous relation, who grows up with his stepdad the sheepherder. When Marek decides during a surge of angry envy to kill the landlord’s spoiled son (by throwing him off a steep edge), he has to live with the ironic consequences – his stepfather cedes his adopted son to the landlord as a substitute. This landlord Villiam is quite playful, spending his days in idle games involving people singing for him, throwing edibles at servants, eating and vomiting at excess in sausage eating contests and nocturnal adventures and conversations with the village priest, concocting new ways to exploit Lapvona’s villagers. Despite his idle playfulness, the landlord is not stupid, he practises all the tricks in the book to extort the villagers: mobilising a gang of robbers to pillage the village and reap the benefits, tell the villagers during a drought that the sale of the harvest fell thru because their goods were stolen on the way to the market, blaming the drought on the devil and the villagers’ disobedient ways while hoarding the water in his own dam. He despises his wife, who cheats on him with the stable master. Hence he asks the stable master to bring in a famous singer from a place at one day travelling distance, has him assassinated and next drives his wife to despair (she escapes at night never to be seen again, her horse is found with his eyes carved out - the very same eyes that Ina the village witch-herbalist is subsequently seen using).

The story is concluded in a typical macabre, and yet plausible way: the landlord marries the deaf mute mom of Marek, who escaped from the nunnery, and arrived at the castle after being raped and impregnated by Marek's dad. Marek has been adopted as the landlord's son. On discovery of the pregnancy, the landlord declares that his newly married wife bears the child of God – that should increase his popularity amongst pilgrims. But when he delays payment of taxes due, and fails to explain the disappearance of his former wife, a sister to the overlord, the game is up. The overlord sends poisoned wine, and somehow this wine wipes out everyone, except Marek and his (foster) dad the new stable master. Marek is the new landlord in name, being completely dominated by the overlord and his tugs.

Moshfegh’s writings are quite graphic and in-the-face. When she writes about Ina, the blind herbalist, who was exorcized (when her family died of a strange disease and Ina didn’t) and who can speak with birds, that she feels lonely, she observes ‘When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn’t know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.’ ( )

Felt like I needed both a physical bath and spiritual cleanse each time I closed this book. Absolute filth and equally disturbing. Moshfegh is at her best when she’s scanning between these spaces. I did wish it was a bit longer (a rarity) and the ending felt a little rushed when the cadence earlier was a bit slower. But it’s a strong rebound that takes some patience and forgiveness.

Spoiler: The grape scene is iconic. ( )