Publication
London : Jonathan Cape, 2022
Physical description
304 p.
ISBN
9781787333826
Language
Collections
Description
"In a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh's most exciting leap yet Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, never knew his mother; his father told him she died in childbirth. One of life's few consolations for Marek is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby, as she did so many of the village's children. Ina's gifts extend beyond childcare: she possesses a unique ability to communicate with the natural world. Her gift often brings her the transmission of sacred knowledge on levels far beyond those available to other villagers, however religious they might be. For some people, Ina's home in the woods outside of the village is a place to fear and to avoid, a godless place. Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains a secret embarrassment of riches. The people's desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by Villiam and the priest, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord's family, new and occult forces upset the old order. By year's end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, the natural world and the spirit world, will prove to be very thin indeed"--… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member lisapeet
Darkly philosophical and darkly funny tale of a medieval fiefdom whose residents are locked in endless—and often pointless—competition for the love of a god they fear, hate, love, and misunderstand. There's a craven lord, a misshapen shepherd's boy, his angry father who only loves his lambs, a
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blind midwife/sorceress who still nurses the town's men, and a bunch of other wonderfully blackhearted folks, all of them venal and abject as the day is long. Not recommended for those easily squicked out by what you'd expect to find in a poor, dirty village in the Middle Ages (violence, abuse, nonconsensual sex, tyranny, dishonesty, and cannibalism come to mind). I liked it. Show Less
LibraryThing member albertgoldfain
Utterly twisted but well written. She gets a lot of mileage out of her characters and a lot of chills out of the horror but I really hope she will eventually write something less horrific.
LibraryThing member ragwaine
I had never heard of Ottessa Moshfegh before seeing this book listed somewhere (can't remember where). I thought she was some new fantasy author and that this was a debut novel. For the first half I just thought it was really weird (not that I don't like weird, but this wasn't really working for
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me), kind of boring, and extremely gross. At about 3/4ths in I started to think there might be something going on here and got more interested, especially as it got more fairy tale like. By the end I felt like I knew the characters pretty well and something had actually happened. Unfortunately, it seemed like maybe there was a religious message at the end, so that detracted from my enjoyment. Show Less
LibraryThing member sturlington
Like all of Moshfegh's novels, Lapvona has a way of making the reader (at least this reader) feel pleasantly unsettled while reading it. Lapvona is a village that doesn't seem so much like a real place as something out of a (very dark) fairy tale, and this is the story of a year of misfortunes that
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befall its inhabitants. The people of Lapvona are all wrapped in complex webs of delusions of their own making, which enable them to cope with the dismal realities of their lives. When someone's delusions begin to unravel, it does not go well for them. There are not many who either want to give up their delusions or can successfully do so. Grigor seems to be one, an enlightenment perhaps brought on by smoking a little weed, which leads him to turn his back on the village as a whole and take to the woods as a hermit. And perhaps Agata is another, although she has absolutely no agency in her life and, with her tongue cut out, cannot even express whatever it is that she believes. Moshfegh tells Lapvona's story plainly and flatly, hiding none of the depravities of this world. It's easy to draw parallels between Lapvona and our own society, but what are we to do with that? Moshfegh offers no answers to that question. Show Less
LibraryThing member kakadoo202
Odd story. Twisted people.
LibraryThing member alexbolding
Cruel parable that reminded me of ‘Harvest’ by Jim Crace, also situated in a village lorded over by a wealthy, uncaring landlord, in the Middle Ages, in a story that is beset with incest, rape, pillage, hunger, and drought.
The story is related in five parts following the seasons, starting and
The story is concluded in a typical macabre, and yet plausible way: the landlord marries the deaf mute mom of Marek, who escaped from the nunnery, and arrived at the castle after being raped and impregnated by Marek's dad. Marek has been adopted as the landlord's son. On discovery of the pregnancy, the landlord declares that his newly married wife bears the child of God – that should increase his popularity amongst pilgrims. But when he delays payment of taxes due, and fails to explain the disappearance of his former wife, a sister to the overlord, the game is up. The overlord sends poisoned wine, and somehow this wine wipes out everyone, except Marek and his (foster) dad the new stable master. Marek is the new landlord in name, being completely dominated by the overlord and his tugs.
Moshfegh’s writings are quite graphic and in-the-face. When she writes about Ina, the blind herbalist, who was exorcized (when her family died of a strange disease and Ina didn’t) and who can speak with birds, that she feels lonely, she observes ‘When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn’t know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.’
The story is related in five parts following the seasons, starting and
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ending with Spring. We follow Marek, a deformed bastard of an incestuous relation, who grows up with his stepdad the sheepherder. When Marek decides during a surge of angry envy to kill the landlord’s spoiled son (by throwing him off a steep edge), he has to live with the ironic consequences – his stepfather cedes his adopted son to the landlord as a substitute. This landlord Villiam is quite playful, spending his days in idle games involving people singing for him, throwing edibles at servants, eating and vomiting at excess in sausage eating contests and nocturnal adventures and conversations with the village priest, concocting new ways to exploit Lapvona’s villagers. Despite his idle playfulness, the landlord is not stupid, he practises all the tricks in the book to extort the villagers: mobilising a gang of robbers to pillage the village and reap the benefits, tell the villagers during a drought that the sale of the harvest fell thru because their goods were stolen on the way to the market, blaming the drought on the devil and the villagers’ disobedient ways while hoarding the water in his own dam. He despises his wife, who cheats on him with the stable master. Hence he asks the stable master to bring in a famous singer from a place at one day travelling distance, has him assassinated and next drives his wife to despair (she escapes at night never to be seen again, her horse is found with his eyes carved out - the very same eyes that Ina the village witch-herbalist is subsequently seen using). The story is concluded in a typical macabre, and yet plausible way: the landlord marries the deaf mute mom of Marek, who escaped from the nunnery, and arrived at the castle after being raped and impregnated by Marek's dad. Marek has been adopted as the landlord's son. On discovery of the pregnancy, the landlord declares that his newly married wife bears the child of God – that should increase his popularity amongst pilgrims. But when he delays payment of taxes due, and fails to explain the disappearance of his former wife, a sister to the overlord, the game is up. The overlord sends poisoned wine, and somehow this wine wipes out everyone, except Marek and his (foster) dad the new stable master. Marek is the new landlord in name, being completely dominated by the overlord and his tugs.
Moshfegh’s writings are quite graphic and in-the-face. When she writes about Ina, the blind herbalist, who was exorcized (when her family died of a strange disease and Ina didn’t) and who can speak with birds, that she feels lonely, she observes ‘When she asked the birds what to do, they answered that they didn’t know anything about love, that love was a distinctly human defect which God had created to counterbalance the power of human greed.’
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LibraryThing member BibliophageOnCoffee
I only read this because Ottessa Moshfegh wrote it. I'm not a big fan of medieval literature or movies/tv shows set during that time period, so this actually exceeded my expectations. However, I think it would have worked better as a novella since the gross descriptions and horrible characters got
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old about halfway through. Show Less
Awards
NPR: Books We Love (2022)
Original publication date
2022