Review: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

Rating: 4/5

Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona is set in a fictional medieval village of the same name. The story initially follows the two opposing classes -- Marek and his father, the village shepherd, represent the lower class, while the depraved lord Villiam and Father Barnabas, the town priest, represent the upper class. But when Marek commits a violent error that brings him in direct contact with Villiam, it alters the course of all their lives permanently.

I didn’t expect to enjoy this book nearly as much as I did. While I’m a fan of Moshfegh’s writing, this one felt like a departure from her previous novels while simultaneously feeling the most representative of the author to-date. It features the bleak and grotesque storytelling that we’ve come to associate with her, but in Lapvona, the village itself acts as an added layer for Moshfegh to explore humanity’s depravity.

Between Marek, his father, Villiam, and Father Barnabas, there is no shortage of moral misgivings to explore. Moshfegh delves into the corruption that drives the polarity between the wealthy and poor, emphasizing how the cruelties of the former group directly impact the conditions of the latter. But despite being historical fiction, Lapvona is far from historical. In fact, it leans more heavily towards fairy tale (think Grimm not Disney) than anything, and it’s a decision that works not just for the narrative, but for Moshfegh’s overall writing style.

Lapvona heavily focuses on religion as a running theme throughout the novel too, summarized in the novel’s epigraph — simply stated by Demi Lovato’s lyric, “I feel stupid when I pray.” This book peels apart the role of religion in a society saturated with depravity, madness, and violence, and through the character of Father Barnabas, it is even suggested that religion itself might be enmeshed within that very evil. Moshfegh poses these questions for consideration, but Lapvona doesn’t end with a clear-cut answer. Instead, the complexities and nuance of religion, of its ever-shifting meaning and purpose, is navigated by the characters’ own experiences with faith. This ultimately allows the reader the freedom to reach their own interpretation.

A long-time fan of Moshfegh's, Lapvona definitely challenges the limitations of what she's become most known for, and I respect this immensely. What it has resulted in is a novel that's experimental, disgusting, and a bit strange, but I loved every minute of reading it.

Thank you @netgalley and @penguinrandomhouse for the digital ARC!

An interesting mix of modern and temporally-alien ethos that isn't always successful but is worth reading. The direct and paratactic narration makes it difficult to get close to the characters or the action– maybe intentionally– but it also has the effect of sometimes making the author seem to be condescending to the "simple" medieval peasants who are her characters. Still, as the events move toward their climax, it becomes engaging and even moving. Would recommend to people who liked Groff's Matrix but want something a bit less feel-good.

Lapvona is one of the best books I have read in recent memory. It's on my mind all the time. I'm going back to read Moshfegh's other works.

After reading Lapvona and My Year of Rest and Relaxation, I feel that Moshfegh's books are really and acquired taste. I personally enjoy the deep sense of unease and sometimes disgust that this book envoked, but understand that it is not for everyone.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a genius. This novel, though utterly horrifying, is perfectly pieced together. It definitely isn't a light-hearted read, featuring everything from abuse to cannibalism, but it certainly is a brilliant one. Packed full of twists and turns, it had me hooked from the very first page. So grateful for the opportunity to read this one!

Oh, Moshfegh. What is in that brain of yours?

This is my 2nd Moshfegh after My Year of Rest and Relaxation (which I loved). Between the premise and the cover of Lapvona, I was intrigued. Lapvona was one of those books where I had to work a bit to figure out the meaning, and tbh, I’m still a bit perplexed. There were obvious themes like class and religion, but I know I’m missing more. One thing I do know is I couldn’t put it down. I was always curious to see what was to become of the characters. Something I love about Moshfegh’s writing, is it is so matter of fact. One sentence she’s like, “he plucked out his gray pube and ate it”, and then she would move right into something like, “the grass is green.” There were a few moments where I was like, wait, what just happened?

From what I've gathered everyone has at least one Moshfegh book that they absolutely loathe, and here I find mine. Tedious, vapid, and gross for no other reason than to test the audiences good taste, Lapvona is the closest thing I've read to a completely pointless novel. Which is almost impressive considering the respected body of work Moshfegh has crafted thus far, and her talent for imbuing even the least likeable of protagonists and most meandering of plots with some literary value.

The two best parts of this book, an intriguing setup and fully-realized setting, are quickly wasted on prolonged suffering in the second act and a confused home stretch that will have the audience scratching their heads, wondering what exactly the point was. Perhaps Moshfegh simply enjoys tortured characters as a means of torturing her readers, I personally really liked My Year of Rest and Relaxation but her disdain for humanity was evident there (even if it was in service to the novels message on the intersection of privilege and mental illness), and is multiplied tenfold here. There is, quite literally, nothing good that happens to anyone over the course of the novel.

Not to say there isn't value in suffering, but to throw such depravity into a story for no other reason then to hammer home plot points and characterization that have already been established just reads like an act of sadism. And I can't even recommend this to fans of gross-out literature because all of the stomach-churning events cease two-thirds in. The only thing Lapvona fully commits to is a feeling of general hatred toward everything, a feeling I am more than happy to reciprocate to this inane, infuriating, work.

My third foray into Moshfegh's writing leaves me ranking this one better than my Death in Her Hands but lower than My Year of Rest and Relaxation—on the one hand, she writes with such a distinct voice, which was a huge boon to this book, but on the other hand, I don't know that I really got much enjoyment from reading this one lol. I did really like the way that she crafted the plot through the seasons, and the way that everything and everyone were tangled together worked really well. This book certainly isn't for everyone, but it's unique and well-written, offering up questions of morality and faith in really interesting ways.

Say what you will about Lapvona and Moshfegh, but no one else is doing it like her. An abject masterpiece!

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley.

I do absolutely adored Ottessa but this book was absolutely stomach churning. We got a very raw and realistic look at how disgusting and depraved a society can really get. Not for the faint of heart.

I usually love this author but this one was just not for me. Unsurprisingly the writing is great, and the novel well structured….but I just didn’t connect. The medieval setting, the truly awful characters, lots of religion, the endless icky details of human depravity. Just nope.

Once I realized what I "think" is the nature of this novel, I appreciated it a little more. At first, it was hard for me to fully embrace it. This is a dark comedy that touches on life of the millennial age group post 9/11 and having gone through a lot. I laughed quietly to myself, while enjoying the novel.
Thankful for the ARC

I just finished this and I'm still reeling. I cannot believe how absorbed I was in this tale of a shepard's boy and his village. I'm not a stranger to Moshfegh's writing, I love her: the cruel streak, the ugliness of life, and the complete lack of joy in her writing (squee! I love how she sees the world). There are things that happen in this story that had me throwing the book on the ground yelling, that did NOT just happen. There were other things that just turned my stomach. I just went on a trip through a range of emotions. This just made my top ten list for 2022.

Not in public review: I continue to recommend O. M. to people I think can handle her work. I honestly believe there is no one else out there writing along the same lines. Is she our modern day Shirley Jackson? I don't know, it's very hard to compare her work to anyone else. Thank you for the advance chance to read this!

It’s not often that I am left so speechless and flustered as to how to go about rating and reviewing a book. Lapvona is so drastically different from Moshfegh’s previous work and lacks almost every component that has allured me to her writing in the past, and for the same reason, this book may just be my favourite.

Lapvona is graphic, vile and disturbing. It is an exploration of greed, power, corruption and sacrifice through the reoccurring theme of religion. Set in a medieval village, Lapvona follows an array of characters from an orphaned Shepard boy, a town witch, a corrupt priest, a greedy governor and a silenced nun, to name a few.

Things I liked:

The story was well-paced and entertaining. The characters of Lapvona are by far my favourite Ottessa has ever written and I was invested in each of their individual storylines and their struggles with power and corruption. These characters are what separate Lapvona from Ottessa’s previous novels. Moshfegh manages to weave together multiple complex and animated characters that continuously have readers both horrified and entertained by the way they move through life, questioning our own morality.

Things I didn’t like:

I felt as though Lapvona lacked the same depth that her previous work has. It didn’t hold a comparable amount of introspective commentary that she is known to explore. In my opinion, Lapvona only scratched the surface of the themes she was writing about and wasn’t saying much that isn’t already widely accepted when it comes to the relationships between greed, power and religion.

Overall, I did love this book and I cannot wait to read it again (probably sooner than later), I wouldn’t be surprised if the more I read this the more there will be to unpack. I highly recommend this to readers who are fans of Moshfegh’s work.

This book is wild, weird, sometimes gross and I loved every minute of not knowing what was around each corner.

I truly don't know what to say about this book. If you're someone who needs characters to be likable or relatable, then Ottessa Moshfegh is not the writer for you, nor has she ever been. She takes baseness and gratuitous grossness (?) to a new level with Lapvona, a story where no one is virtuous or possesses any redeeming qualities. Our protagonists are rapists and murderers, and our antagonist is a lord who doesn't even care when his mutilated son's dead body is brought to his doorstep.

While all this sounds hard to stomach, it's not a difficult read to get through. The writing is strangely detached, so your heart won't ache when someone dies of starvation and is cut apart and eaten. The characters themselves are all selfish and possess no regard for others, Of course, since it's Moshfegh, the book is well-written as expected. I have not read any interviews with her regarding this story, but I intend to seek them out. I wonder what the point of it all is--that power corrupts? We knew that. That all people are, at their core, self-serving? What exactly is she trying to convey?

I read a review that questioned whether Moshfegh is talking down to her readers, or if she considers them intelligent. I can't say, but I DO wonder what her publishers thought when she brought them this manuscript.

Moshfegh has a very interesting writing style, and this was my first time encountering any of her works. I have to say, it was not for me. Something about it was off-putting.. I couldn't get through it.

Loved this. A drastic departure from previous Ottessa Moshfegh novels, but just as captivating. A sick, twisted story that kept rolling to a great conclusion.

"At once immensely alien and deeply human, Moshfegh’s latest is a brutal, inventive novel about the ways that stories and the act of storytelling shape us and articulate our world."

From my Library Journal review.

Ottessa you little freak I love you... all of the hateable, shocking, Shrek-like elements of the book really worked for me. She's both consistent in that you know what you're going to get from this book, pretty much, but you can't imagine how exactly she'll get there. A master. This is definitely a departure from other books — I liked the different perspectives and the all-knowing narrator — I think it's my second-favorite of hers. So fun, so wild, would recommend, probably won't read again.

Thanks NetGalley + publisher for my free review copy!