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3.48 AVERAGE
3.48 AVERAGE
I really wanted to love this but it definitely doesn’t surpass 3 (maybe 3.5?) stars for me. The short stories are all thematically connected and Moshfegh does a great job in making mundane aspects of the world feel grotesque and brutish. The similar nature of the stories inevitably resulted in some entries feeling formulaic and predictable; the stronger entries are definitely ones with varying perspectives or multifaceted narrators.
Standouts for me (in no particular order): A Better Place, An Honest Woman, Beach Boys, Dark and Winding Road and Dancing in The Moonlight.
Standouts for me (in no particular order): A Better Place, An Honest Woman, Beach Boys, Dark and Winding Road and Dancing in The Moonlight.
dark
medium-paced
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
medium-paced
Ottessa Moshfegh has developed a steadfast process for writing books with an extreme lack of substance. I am not by any means against a book that doesn't have plot- I think if characters are compelling enough, if what's left of the book outside of plot can stand for itself, it can be done well. That being said- these stories do not do it well! Don't pick this one up if you're someone whose enjoyable reading experience is contingent on dialogue or plot, for most of the stories are told through each characters' internal monologue and lengthy scenery descriptions.
That being said, I do thing Moshfegh has a talent for detailed description- very mundane things like someone walking to their car, brushing their teeth, etc. come alive in her writing style, and she’s particularly well-versed in describing the grotesque. Its precisely this that makes her works so controversial- some readers are really into the descriptions of character’s ugly and off-putting appearances, their selfish and unfiltered thoughts, and their bland and downtrodden environments. Others aren’t. I couldn’t quite decide where I landed on this. Throughout the novel, I found some descriptions helpful, and others didn’t seem to add anything. Do we really need at least three separate instances talking about someone squeezing their pimples?
I originally picked this short story collection up because I saw value in Moshfegh's other novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (I think it'd be misleading of me to say I 'enjoyed' that novel? But I found it well-written for lots of reasons, went through it quickly and it provided some introspection). What My Year has that these short stories don't is a continued, long-form relationship between the reader and the unlikeable, repellant character. Due to the short nature of these stories, the reader (or at least this reader) doesn't feel compelled to sympathize with the characters or see beyond their burgeoning insensitive thoughts in the same way they might with My Year. What works for My Year is that we end up giving a fuck about the narrator simply because we've spent so much time hearing from her - it’s like a sunken cost fallacy. Without that investment in a character, Ottessa's writing style really falls flat.
About halfway through the stories, I had to wonder what the hell the point of it all was. Maybe Moshfegh is trying to get the reader to see how our own thoughts can be so cruel, pathetic, or downright gross through growing to understand these characters? Maybe she's trying to encourage us to feel vindicated by the fact that other people are just as awful as we are? Or the opposite- to feel better about ourselves because our own inner thoughts aren't as hateful as theirs? If it's that last one, maybe it worked, as I honestly don't think I view people through the same lens as these protagonists do in my daily life. I know that there has to be a separation between what an author thinks and what they write their characters to think, but the uniform opinions of many characters in this series made me question often if Moshfegh was just writing her own unlikeable beliefs onto these characters, so then she’d be able to say ‘well that’s what the character thinks, not me’ if anyone criticized it.
Related to that is how Moshfegh fails at defining the characters from one another. I'll be real and acknowledge that I could not tell the voices of Mr. Wu, Larry, and the protagonist from Malibu apart at all. Same with many other characters! Aside from specific details about their lives, many of their internal thoughts and motivations were so similar, right down to their noted dislike for fat people, mentally or physically disabled people, and the lower class. (I'm so for real if you want to be reminded of how much society hates fat people for just existing, look no further than these stories because it's somehow included in every goddamn one). I don't think Moshfegh's character development lends itself to a short story collection - My Year worked well because readers only met like 3 other characters outside of the main narrator, and we never heard from their personal thoughts, just the narrator's perception of them. With these stories, we're getting an inner dialogue that sounds like it was copy-pasted onto different life circumstances and identities that didn't match with the voices.
I’m not sure if reading another Moshfegh book (Eileen, Lapvona, McGlue, etc.) would help me make up my mind on her as an author, but after reading Homesick for Another World, I don’t feel eager to try to find out.
That being said, I do thing Moshfegh has a talent for detailed description- very mundane things like someone walking to their car, brushing their teeth, etc. come alive in her writing style, and she’s particularly well-versed in describing the grotesque. Its precisely this that makes her works so controversial- some readers are really into the descriptions of character’s ugly and off-putting appearances, their selfish and unfiltered thoughts, and their bland and downtrodden environments. Others aren’t. I couldn’t quite decide where I landed on this. Throughout the novel, I found some descriptions helpful, and others didn’t seem to add anything. Do we really need at least three separate instances talking about someone squeezing their pimples?
I originally picked this short story collection up because I saw value in Moshfegh's other novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation (I think it'd be misleading of me to say I 'enjoyed' that novel? But I found it well-written for lots of reasons, went through it quickly and it provided some introspection). What My Year has that these short stories don't is a continued, long-form relationship between the reader and the unlikeable, repellant character. Due to the short nature of these stories, the reader (or at least this reader) doesn't feel compelled to sympathize with the characters or see beyond their burgeoning insensitive thoughts in the same way they might with My Year. What works for My Year is that we end up giving a fuck about the narrator simply because we've spent so much time hearing from her - it’s like a sunken cost fallacy. Without that investment in a character, Ottessa's writing style really falls flat.
About halfway through the stories, I had to wonder what the hell the point of it all was. Maybe Moshfegh is trying to get the reader to see how our own thoughts can be so cruel, pathetic, or downright gross through growing to understand these characters? Maybe she's trying to encourage us to feel vindicated by the fact that other people are just as awful as we are? Or the opposite- to feel better about ourselves because our own inner thoughts aren't as hateful as theirs? If it's that last one, maybe it worked, as I honestly don't think I view people through the same lens as these protagonists do in my daily life. I know that there has to be a separation between what an author thinks and what they write their characters to think, but the uniform opinions of many characters in this series made me question often if Moshfegh was just writing her own unlikeable beliefs onto these characters, so then she’d be able to say ‘well that’s what the character thinks, not me’ if anyone criticized it.
Related to that is how Moshfegh fails at defining the characters from one another. I'll be real and acknowledge that I could not tell the voices of Mr. Wu, Larry, and the protagonist from Malibu apart at all. Same with many other characters! Aside from specific details about their lives, many of their internal thoughts and motivations were so similar, right down to their noted dislike for fat people, mentally or physically disabled people, and the lower class. (I'm so for real if you want to be reminded of how much society hates fat people for just existing, look no further than these stories because it's somehow included in every goddamn one). I don't think Moshfegh's character development lends itself to a short story collection - My Year worked well because readers only met like 3 other characters outside of the main narrator, and we never heard from their personal thoughts, just the narrator's perception of them. With these stories, we're getting an inner dialogue that sounds like it was copy-pasted onto different life circumstances and identities that didn't match with the voices.
I’m not sure if reading another Moshfegh book (Eileen, Lapvona, McGlue, etc.) would help me make up my mind on her as an author, but after reading Homesick for Another World, I don’t feel eager to try to find out.
I loved this collection of short stories. Every one of them was so interesting to me, I kind of can't believe it. I will probably revisit these in the future and I rarely reread books.
adventurous
challenging
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
various stories and she’s good at telling every.single.one.