Book No. 81 of 2020
A dark, comedically tragic (or tragically comedic?) journey of a pharmaceutical-enabled Sleeping Beauty’s attempt to numb her pain and existential detachment. Moshfegh’s story is absurd, funny, heartbreaking, and oddly relatable. (There is something curiously seductive about the protagonist’s self-destructive impulses—human nature is wild.) It also made me feel a little uneasy about my own relationship to sleep; I think anyone who has ever let unhealthy sleep habits get out of whack, or had weird enhanced sleep (by way of medication or jet lag or whatever) can see faint traces of their own experiences here.
The place-setting of the story is subtle, at first, and then, for reasons that are obvious when you read the book, creates an atmosphere of impending doom—you know and dread what’s coming, and you can’t escape it. There’s also something very visual and evocative about Moshfegh’s writing—I felt at times like I was watching a film. (There are no thematic parallels whatsoever but it gave me The Favourite vibes??)
Also, hats off to Moshfegh for making me laugh so hard and so uncontrollably at some point that both my fiancé and my cat became severely worried.
Similar Reads
The extreme disconnect of the protagonist from society reminded me of Sayako Murata’s Convenience Store Woman, and to a lesser extent Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.
The dry absurdity reminded me of Elif Batuman’s The Idiot.
The obsessive friendship dynamic, as well as the fatalistic feel approaching the end, reminded me of Elena Ferrante’s Neopolitan novels.