‘Despite her headaches, Ina went into the village regularly to cast spells upon the women that they be blessed with babies, per the priest’s requests. She gave each man who requested it a public massage with fake forsythia oil – all the forsythia plants had died and would take at least a year to grow back and flower. The oil she used was just the distilled yellow liquid of her own boiled urine, but it worked just as well. ‘It only takes a little bit,’ she said, dabbing her piss on the tip of each member and rubbing the perimeum with her soft, wrinkled thumb. The men all grew large with excitement and got hungry for their wives. Nobody commented on the strange look of Ina’s eyes, but all were astounded that she had regained her vision. She claimed it was the miracle of her own medicine. In truth, Ina had replaced her old blind eyes with the eyes of Dibra’s horse.’
Ottessa Moshfegh’s fourth novel continues her trajectory of producing work which takes a left turn from her previous outing, wrongfooting the reader’s expectations and creating within each relatively slender volume a unique vision of the world, often with an off-kilter sensibility which keeps the reader’s rapt attention.
‘Eileen’, Moshfegh’s first full length novel set the tone with her tale of Eileen who ‘fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a handsome prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes.’ This is a novel which creates the world around Eileen’s damaged world view, a slightly sordid, vulgar world in which tiny victories over her enemies brings nothing but joy:
‘I had to dig my hand down the front of my skirt, under the girdle, inside the underwear, and when the itch had been relieved I pulled my fingers out and smelled them. It’s a natural curiosity, to smell one’s fingers…Later, when the day was done, these were the fingers I extended, still unwashed, to Dr. Frye, when I wished him a happy retirement on his way out the door.’
As I said in my review, ‘Eileen’ reminded me so much of the work of John Waters who also creates worlds unique to his vision, creating characters who may be off-kilter, even depraved but none-the-less characters which the viewer can’t help but side with…and so to Lapvona, in which Moshfegh brings her talent to a world which imagines a mash up between Water’s ‘Female Trouble’ and Pasolini’s ‘120 Days of Sodom.’ If you have seen either of those films you will know that ‘Lapvona’ won’t appeal to everyone. You may be shocked, you may be repulsed, but you certainly won’t be bored.
In the medieval fiefdom of Lapvona, young Marek lives with his father Jake, a shepherd. They share a deep religion and a penchant for sado-masochism. Marek has physical deformities and a hard, harsh existence, with only one joy: suckling the breast of the village’s blind midwife, Ina – a delight shared by most of the village offspring. Overseeing the land of Lapvona from his palace of riches is Villiam and his sidekick, the godless priest Father Barnabus. When Villiam’s son is killed by Marek, Villiam spares Marek by taking him as a replacement son, taking Marek from sheep hugging poverty to palatial extravagance. Of course, there’s more: twists and turns akin to the best soap operas and depravations including incest and cannibalism
But ‘Lapvona’ never truly appalls and never truly horrifies which is no bad thing. Moshfegh’s writing keeps the stuff of nightmares away from the gruelling onslaught of Pasolini’s work, somehow making it dreadful yes, but never guttural and brutal. Sometimes ‘Lapvona’ comes across as a jet black comedy with Moshfegh’s talent for dropping in a killer’s kiss to jerk the reader from their expectations. Here, a female character, Agata is in confinement due to pregnancy with Ina the village midwife looking after her:
‘Inside the room, Agata was not even allowed out of bed. Given how Agata had wanted Marek destroyed, and how he’d turned out in the end, Ina didn’t trust her to care for the unborn child. Ina took full charge. ‘Do as I say, or this time the baby will surely kill you.’ Agata didn’t mind the incarceration or the pillows propped under her back or the ropes around her wrists and ankles trying her to the posts of the bed.’
Some might say this is an avoidance of reality and, I suspect, this is the point – ‘Lapvona’ seems to exist on the level of the folktale where, as we know, terrible things happen but they are told in such as way as to entice the reader but also serve as a warning. But quite what the warning is in Moshfegh’s work is possibly its only downfall.
So, other fine novel from Moshfegh, another intriguing adventure with this brave and bold writer, one of the few writing today who thrills with unpredictability.
I loved ‘Lapvona’, but expect that not everyone will feel the same.
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