Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

From all the books by Ottessa Moshfegh I´ve read until now, only Lapvona was missing. I am not sure if I´ve carefully read the book description but in general I am always careful when it comes to fantasy, any kind of it. I had it as a loan for a very long time and had to return it, thus my determination to finish it. 

It was a very difficult read. Not because of the complex ideas expressed, but because the plot is getting so busy with so many side stories that are just surviving autonomously, with no connection to a main story. Instead of ´difficult´ I may rather have to say, exhausting, but the wrong case of it.

Set in a far away land - some critiques suggested it may be Eastern Europe because people are wild and unable to control their feelings and affects and misplace basic feelings like maternity ? Have you heard about visigoths, by the way - called Lapvona, with inhabitants having children out of wedlocks, the book follows mostly the random turns of chance of Marek, a marked little boy, after killing his best friend out of envy during a walk in the mountains. Tip: the crime will actually promote him from the modest companion of an aggressive herdman to the substitute son of a pleasure-driven king.

Although the geography is doubtful, the pace and the characters may be remnants of Middle Ages tales, but upgraded at a very grotesque level. Sexual debauchery or various out-of-this world experiments with dreams and blindness healing (my favorite one is how Ina replaced her eyes with horse´s eyes, just like that, and she was able to see better, by the way).

The writing is not disappointing though, and this was the only ray of light guiding my difficult reading of this book for one full month. I am glad I´ve read it but I wished it was a different story. I am suppose that in this case I am just one of those nagging readers that are hard to be satisfied but I promise that I will be, even when reading fiction, if the story will really click. In this case, it just didn´t work out, no matter how much I´ve tried.

Rating: 2.5 stars