Cat

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

Given the hype, I was expecting to dislike this.

I didn't.

The protagonist is privileged, inhuman, simultaneously vapid and profound, fake and the realest. A complete basket case.

The writer is incredibly skilled in controlling her naked prose and cut it as close to where it would bleed as possible.
(At one point, she describes the movements of a character's hands as they mimic the box in which their mother's ashes are sitting, unironically, as “voguing”).

The book doesn't really want to teach you anything. And that's okay.
That's honest.

5 out 5 stars. As unethical and slightly painful as it feels to describe this book as “good”, it's impossible not to.

This was difficult to rate.
Tara's storyline is winding and the editing is inconsistent.
The first half of the book reads as if it were a written version of Final Destination, but with a family of Mormon fundamentalists for protagonists: who will be torn apart, burned or mangled next?
The second half is what made me give this four stars: the tale of how the main character ultimately saves herself from decades of gaslighting and psychological abuse is worth the read.

Oh! A love story, ok.

Three months later: ok, this Connell guy seems to be a fuckboy.

Two months later: ok, Connell is an idiot.

Six weeks later: Connell is still an idiot

One year later: Connell? What a moron.

Two weeks later: oh, Marianne is pretty f***ed up too.

Twelve days later: Connell is still pretty dumb for someone who is supposed to be a genius. Marianne is still a mess.

...

Four years later: Connell is still a stupid man and Marianne is still a mess, but a little better. All in all, they are indeed pretty normal people.

There is nothing I don't like about Moshfegh's prose.
She is clean, laser-sharp and full of tough love for her language, in a way that commands respect.

The lunacy of her characters? Also admirable in the way it relentlessly comes at you from left field.

But reading this short story collection was, to me, a sad affair.

I get that the underlying thesis of the book (and perhaps the author's vision) is that people are awful and on my average day I might feel inclined to agree with her.

But I still think someone fumbled with the quantities in this one: the - exquisitely crafted - fascination with filth gets easily repetitive and ultimately boring: There is little to no plot in most of the stories (which probably qualify better as ‘character studies') and while I'm not necessarily a fan of plot-heavy prose, I definitively would have enjoyed a bit more of it, because - with the exception of four of these - ‘awful' seems to have many faces but the same exact tone of voice.

I get how, rationally, an old chauvinist who only sees women as commodities could sound quite like a young chauvinist who only sees women as commodities, but I don't necessarily want to read about it for 300 pages, if this is all I get.

Again: I love Moshfegh's writing and I admire the way she seems to be on a quest to use every single English word (agog!). But I like her best when she takes the time to flesh out her characters a little more and actually puts them up to something.