I don’t fit into the intended audience of most contemporary fiction reviewers so I try to avoid them. But a recent YouTube reviewer had one of my favorites, Blood Meridian, on his top fiction list so I stupidly followed one of his recommendations.
If I had researched contemporary author Ottessa Moshfegh better, I would have passed by her latest novel, Lapvona. I avoid writers with an MFA (Moshfegh’s MFA is from Brown). I feel extra stupid about buying Lapvona because I thought Moshfegh was a foreigner but the joke is on me; she is an American.
Lapvona follows several characters in a remote Medieval village. During the story arc, drought overtakes the village transforming the already bleak existence into a nightmareish landscape.
A central protagonist is a deformed shepherd boy who lives alone with his father. The father sustains the boy with stories about his beautiful mother who loved him but died birthing him. I should point out that nearly all of the book’s narrators are unreliable.
The YouTube reviewer praised the book’s ‘gritty realism,’ but you will be disappointed if you are looking for gritty realism here. Under the author’s generic prose, scenes of potential horror are denuded of interest, as if the author is merely repeating a story told to her by someone else. A public execution early in the book, for example, lacks any vividness except for one witness who acts masochismically. This is a Blood Meridian wannabe.
Masochism plays a central role in the novel. Religion for the villagers is an opportunity to compete masochistically to see who has suffered the most. Filth, poverty, and self-flagellation move one closer to God. The villagers accept things with complete passivity; things happen for no reason.
The book’s villain is the local lord whose interests are pleasure and entertainment. The effect of any action is weighed for its entertainment value. Like the villagers, the lord reacts with passivity to life’s tragic events. Life isn’t real; it’s designed for entertainment. This view is very modern and–as I suppose–reflects the author’s view.
The novelist does not believe in the author’s adage of ‘show, don’t tell.’ The author literally tells us that the parish priest is a venal fool. Not only does the priest fail to understand Latin, but he is also ignorant of the Bible and Christianity’s basic teachings. So he makes up stories about Jesus to cover his ignorance. The villagers, including the Lord, are equally ignorant and fail to notice the counterfeit. A plot element involves an infant who might be the new lord and savior. This alarms the priest who dreads a potential visit from the Bishop and worries that his fraud might be discovered.
Against the morbid and depressing village atmosphere, the book’s true theme is motherhood. The book’s two most important characters are the local witch and a young mother.
The elderly witch (or healer according to some villagers) lost her sight during a youthful illness that also made her infertile. Miraculously, the illness caused her breasts to permanently lactate and so the witch became the village’s nursemaid. The witch also generously offers her sagging breasts to grown villagers and children seeking comfort. The deformed shepherd boy frequently takes comfort there.
The young mother despises her condition and takes every expedient the witch can provide to rid herself of the hated child she is carrying. The hatred and loathing of motherhood is one of the few authentic elements in the book and offers some of the book’s few moments of real horror.
The witch is the only character who undergoes fundamental change. Her story is sometimes told with a magic quality that lifts it above the rest of the prose. During these all too few passages the story achieves a fable-like quality that carries the reader convincingly along.
Lapvona is a morbid and boring novel. If read as a fairy tale it has charms, but not enough unfortunately to redeem the experience.
