People have been tweeting the highlights of "Fear," by Woodward. Fair enough. But I feel that Ottessa Moshfegh's new novel deserves similar attention.
-Yes, the protagonist describes a twisted love. Her lazy sometimes-boyfriend accuses her of being a prude because she won't administer oral services to him while he is on the toilet. To prove she is in fact not a prude, she offers to have him penetrate an oft-overlooked orifice. He tries, and stops, claiming that there is fecal matter all over his member, and the protagonist knows this is false, because "he didn't even get inside there."
-Are you hooked? The entirety of the first one hundred pages--at least--is like this.
-The narrator, having lost both of her (checked-out) parents, decides to sleep for a year. She will have a "year of rest and relaxation," and maybe when she wakes up she will stop feeling disgusted by everything. Her mother was clinically depressed and would have her sleep right in the bed, the parental bed, so that waking up the kiddos did not require walking across a hallway. Many days, the narrator did not get to school before noon. She relays all this in a blase way because, I guess, it's all she has ever known.
-To make constant sleep possible, the narrator sees a terrible psychiatrist who prescribes trazodone, Ambien, and at least ten other drugs. The running joke about the psychiatrist is that she can't remember that the narrator's parents are dead. But she cares very, very much about missed sessions. ("I have a 24-hour cancellation policy, which is actually quite generous. I just want to remind you of that.")
-When awake, the narrator watches Whoopi Goldberg movies. She can't watch "Sister Act" because she gets too excited, and wants to "jump around and dance in the street." Well, maybe one viewing per week. She watches "Ghost," though Whoopi's part is so small in that. She does enjoy Harrison Ford, and particularly the Indiana Jones movies, as well.
-She has a friend, Reva, who is obsessed with weight loss and women's magazines. Reva cannot take part in anyone's pleasure or triumph. When the narrator has good news, Reva winces and says, "I hate you." Reva will visit and ask half a question, then spin it into a monologue about her own current needs. The narrator thinks, "Reva wants to come over to pretend to want to help me." This is the central relationship in the novel!
-All of this has a Kafka feel; it's like waking up and discovering you have turned into a giant bug. But it's set in the present, or at least in 2000, with all the buzzy drug references and the weird allusions to "Primal Fear" and to "The Color Purple." The narrator worked briefly--"I had to sit at a desk in a gallery and look rude"--but she was taking too many naps in a supply closet. (She is thin and beautiful, and "resembles Angelina Jolie in GIRL INTERRUPTED," so she has that going for her.) Upon getting fired, the narrator defecates on the lobby floor of her gallery, then stuffs a stained tissue in the mouth of one of the taxidermy-ed exhibits.
-I genuinely don't know where this story is going. Which is refreshing. I admire the chutzpah, the weirdness, the insistence on a deeply detestable narrator. Keep going, Otessa!
-Yes, the protagonist describes a twisted love. Her lazy sometimes-boyfriend accuses her of being a prude because she won't administer oral services to him while he is on the toilet. To prove she is in fact not a prude, she offers to have him penetrate an oft-overlooked orifice. He tries, and stops, claiming that there is fecal matter all over his member, and the protagonist knows this is false, because "he didn't even get inside there."
-Are you hooked? The entirety of the first one hundred pages--at least--is like this.
-The narrator, having lost both of her (checked-out) parents, decides to sleep for a year. She will have a "year of rest and relaxation," and maybe when she wakes up she will stop feeling disgusted by everything. Her mother was clinically depressed and would have her sleep right in the bed, the parental bed, so that waking up the kiddos did not require walking across a hallway. Many days, the narrator did not get to school before noon. She relays all this in a blase way because, I guess, it's all she has ever known.
-To make constant sleep possible, the narrator sees a terrible psychiatrist who prescribes trazodone, Ambien, and at least ten other drugs. The running joke about the psychiatrist is that she can't remember that the narrator's parents are dead. But she cares very, very much about missed sessions. ("I have a 24-hour cancellation policy, which is actually quite generous. I just want to remind you of that.")
-When awake, the narrator watches Whoopi Goldberg movies. She can't watch "Sister Act" because she gets too excited, and wants to "jump around and dance in the street." Well, maybe one viewing per week. She watches "Ghost," though Whoopi's part is so small in that. She does enjoy Harrison Ford, and particularly the Indiana Jones movies, as well.
-She has a friend, Reva, who is obsessed with weight loss and women's magazines. Reva cannot take part in anyone's pleasure or triumph. When the narrator has good news, Reva winces and says, "I hate you." Reva will visit and ask half a question, then spin it into a monologue about her own current needs. The narrator thinks, "Reva wants to come over to pretend to want to help me." This is the central relationship in the novel!
-All of this has a Kafka feel; it's like waking up and discovering you have turned into a giant bug. But it's set in the present, or at least in 2000, with all the buzzy drug references and the weird allusions to "Primal Fear" and to "The Color Purple." The narrator worked briefly--"I had to sit at a desk in a gallery and look rude"--but she was taking too many naps in a supply closet. (She is thin and beautiful, and "resembles Angelina Jolie in GIRL INTERRUPTED," so she has that going for her.) Upon getting fired, the narrator defecates on the lobby floor of her gallery, then stuffs a stained tissue in the mouth of one of the taxidermy-ed exhibits.
-I genuinely don't know where this story is going. Which is refreshing. I admire the chutzpah, the weirdness, the insistence on a deeply detestable narrator. Keep going, Otessa!
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