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A review by brookegabor
Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh
Did not finish book. Stopped at 28%.
put this down for like 4 months and finally decided to check out the audiobook to get through the rest of it. the first story i listened to just said the phrase “i smoked as faggily as i could” and i had to immediately pause and decided i would not be picking it back up again.
i get to a certain extent that moshfegh makes her characters purposefully bigoted and hateful — whether they’re misogynistic, homophobic, racist, ableist, fatphobic, etc etc — and sometimes that can work for a story i suppose, but to have every character in this collection as far as i got have pretty much that same disgusting characterization was not interesting or enjoyable to read at all. it also begs the question of why? what is the purpose of making every character fatphobic, racist, homophobic, and so on? especially when it’s not even relevant to the plot of the story. i feel like it’s 1. unnecessary and 2. doesn’t showcase good writing at alll.
it actually is frustrating how much i hated all these stories because i did enjoy my year of rest and relaxation and i LOVED eileen. i want to give moshfegh another chance but i will definitely not be picking this up again.
i get to a certain extent that moshfegh makes her characters purposefully bigoted and hateful — whether they’re misogynistic, homophobic, racist, ableist, fatphobic, etc etc — and sometimes that can work for a story i suppose, but to have every character in this collection as far as i got have pretty much that same disgusting characterization was not interesting or enjoyable to read at all. it also begs the question of why? what is the purpose of making every character fatphobic, racist, homophobic, and so on? especially when it’s not even relevant to the plot of the story. i feel like it’s 1. unnecessary and 2. doesn’t showcase good writing at alll.
it actually is frustrating how much i hated all these stories because i did enjoy my year of rest and relaxation and i LOVED eileen. i want to give moshfegh another chance but i will definitely not be picking this up again.