Lapvona (2022) by Ottessa Moshfegh

Book Review

Lapvona (2022)

by Ottessa Moshfegh

    Ottessa Moshfegh is one of my favorite American authors of literary fiction working today- I look forward to each of her books since her break out hit (My Year of Rest and Relaxation.)  Also, I went back and read all of her earlier publications excepting her book of short stories.  What I like about Moshfegh is that she moves around in place and time.    You've got McGlue- set in Salem in the 19th century.  Eileen is set in small-town New England in the mid 20th century.  Death in Her Hands and My Year are both contemporary, though the former takes place in the country side and My Year is a very New York City kind of book.  I would describe that quality as "range."  Ottessa Moshfegh has range, and it is often range that is sorely lacking in contemporary American literary fiction, with its surfeit of stressed out  mothers and nervous fathers.

  With Lapvona she invents her own fictious land- it's what we would call the Middle Ages, in someplace that resembles the petit feudalism of medieval Europe.   Lapvona is not a fantastical place- quite the opposite in its resolute grimness.  The world is grim, the characters as well.   Those looking for uplift are best warned away ahead of time.   The obvious comparison within her own bibliography is McGlue, though McGlue is squarely within the 19th century vein of American literature that reached its apogee with Moby Dick, i.e. tales of the sea and seamen,  Lapvona doesn't clearly fit into any pre-existing genre that I'm aware of- certainly historical literary fiction is a pre-existing genre, but Lapvona doesn't resemble that sort of book.

  Perhaps the closest comparison would be to The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro- which is a work of gentle fantasy (which Lapvona is decidedly not.)  No, Lapvona is in no way gentle.  It is in fact, Brutal.  It is one of those books which loses impact if you know what is coming, even though it is in no way a book with a twist.