Cat

This seemed like an attractive concept, but the execution is what I have trouble with.
Aside from the usual Japanese meta-realistic storytelling style, which slowly insinuates something is maybe not really happening the way you thought it was, but then provides no resolution, this also suffers a particularly dry writing style (at times it almost sounds like product placement, see the whole Amazon Prime tangent) and a form of subtle social criticism that's perhaps way too subtle.

The terrible, horrible, no-good book of self-praise, as narrated by extraordinarily strong-willed but otherwise insufferable mountaineer Nimsdai Purja.

By the time I got to the halfway point, I couldn't wait for it to finish.

The narrative around the protagonist's learning disability sounds genuine, and I would have liked it if it had been developed further.

I normally eat up whatever Moshfegh writes. In a way, this is also the case: I wasn't enjoying the experience but I just kept on reading.
This is Moshfegh's literary debut. Her voice is still a little blunt and her unreliable narrator reliably predictable. The writing craft is already strong - there is one page in 118 almost entirely consistent of a list of goods traded aboard 19th century merchant ships that is a joy to read through.
Sadly, the credibility is occasionally marred by lack of historical research or fact-checking: reading that a 1851 drunken sailor had been prescribed ‘vitamins' in the form of ‘pills' by a medical doctor was simply off-putting to me.

The beauty of this terrible, terrible novella is heart-wrenching.