ilk@bookrastinating.com reviewed Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh
Lapvona
3 stars
Marek a god-fearing shepherd's boy does his pious best to make sense of grim life circumstances until one day he makes an impulsive decision during an excursion with the landlord's son. The book reads like The Life of Brian crossed with Caligula or something directed by Branden Cronenburg.
It's a pithy study of resentment in all its flavors. Ludicrous and depraved yet readable. The characters are often preoccupied with wrongs, slights, past mistakes and post facto justifications of behaviour. Most of them are either idiots or scoundrels. Ina, a longlived wet-nurse, and Grigor, an elderly man turned Cynic (the original Diogenean sense of cynic) were my favorites.
The setting is never stated but my guess is circa 5th century Anatolia or Armenia. The early book refers 'fair northeners' who are 'amoral' and 'well suited to servile tasks', which I read as slavs of some description. A key scene indicates the …
Marek a god-fearing shepherd's boy does his pious best to make sense of grim life circumstances until one day he makes an impulsive decision during an excursion with the landlord's son. The book reads like The Life of Brian crossed with Caligula or something directed by Branden Cronenburg.
It's a pithy study of resentment in all its flavors. Ludicrous and depraved yet readable. The characters are often preoccupied with wrongs, slights, past mistakes and post facto justifications of behaviour. Most of them are either idiots or scoundrels. Ina, a longlived wet-nurse, and Grigor, an elderly man turned Cynic (the original Diogenean sense of cynic) were my favorites.
The setting is never stated but my guess is circa 5th century Anatolia or Armenia. The early book refers 'fair northeners' who are 'amoral' and 'well suited to servile tasks', which I read as slavs of some description. A key scene indicates the place is mountainous, and nearby place names bear some resemblance to real locales such as Pripyat, Ukraine and Istria, Croatia.
A minor gripe from a non-American reader: on a few occasions I got taken out of the setting due to Moshfegh using Americanisms, such as 'moseying'. The author is American so it's kind of understandable, but it still struck me as a weird word choice given the subect matter.
