If you thought the eponymous antiheroine of Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen was downtrodden, depraved and desperate... well, let's just say you ain't seIf you thought the eponymous antiheroine of Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen was downtrodden, depraved and desperate... well, let's just say you ain't seen nothing yet.
The characters in Moshfegh's short stories are wretched and invariably lonely, even (perhaps especially) when they are not alone. They haunt shabby apartments and dirty restaurants. They're ugly on either the inside or outside, or both. If they have a job, they probably hate it. If they have a partner, they probably hate them. If they do experience any small bright spark of contentment, it's bound to be somehow extinguished. More than anything else, the people in these stories bubble over with contempt: for themselves, for others, for the world.
Moshfegh has a tendency to push far enough past realism that she seems to start slipping into satire. 'Mr. Wu', in which the title character courts the woman of his dreams by sending her a horrifically insulting text message, feels like a pitch-black riff on the culture of pick-up artists and 'negging'; in 'Bettering Myself', it's impossible to believe the incessantly negligent protagonist would be able to hang on to her job as a teacher for more than a day. There are hints of Lindsay Hunter's grotesque visions of working-class America, as well as the grimy dystopia of George Saunders. Though a handful deviate from type – 'The Beach Boy' revolves around a well-off couple in their fifties – most fit a mould of sorts: misfits living in sorry conditions and behaving in misanthropic, occasionally shocking, ways which are difficult to understand or rationalise.
Many of the stories also have what you might term non sequitur endings. At best, they seem deliberately built that way: a glimpse into twilight worlds in which the cruellest possible punchline is that life goes on. At worst (an example being the otherwise strong 'A Dark and Winding Road') they feel like the author found an almost-finished draft and stuck a random paragraph on the end to make it resemble a complete story in the most basic sense. Moshfegh gave a now-notorious interview about Eileen in which she claimed to have started writing it as a joke, using a manual called The 90-Day Novel, but it's this book, much more than that one, that feels like it's been hastily assembled.
If you've read Eileen, it's impossible not to feel the shadow of Eileen Dunlop hanging over these stories. It's not unusual for them to slip into the same lacerating tone of self-hatred Moshfegh used in her novel:
Nothing made me happy. I went out to the pool, skimmed the surface of the blue water with my hand, praying for one of us, my boyfriend or me, to die. ('Weirdos')
I had a thing about fat people. It was the same thing I had about skinny people: I hated their guts. ('Malibu')
Earth is the wrong place for me, always was and will be until the day I die. ('A Better Place')
Nevertheless, I'd hesitate to say 'if you liked Eileen, you'll love this'. Spending time inside an 'unlikeable' character's head for the duration of an entire novel challenges you to understand them, find empathy, collude with their actions, see yourself reflected. Being confronted with a slew of bile-filled individuals and dismal situations in quick succession is another thing altogether, and offers little opportunity to get to grips with the whys and wherefores of these people's lives.
My favourite story in Homesick For Another World was 'Weirdos', an unpredictable narrative that contains more discernible traces of humour than most of the others. 'Slumming' and 'Dancing in the Moonlight' also stand out. There are great lines in almost every story, making them strongest at the sentence level, and it's possible to open the book at any page and pull out a wonderful soundbite or piece of description. Ultimately, however, I found the cumulative effect of so many negative characters, filled with inward and outward loathing, draining. This wasn't a book I relished reading – in fact, finishing it was like forcing bitter medicine down my throat. There's no doubt Moshfegh is a technically excellent writer, but I can't give a particularly high rating or recommendation when my prevailing reaction was 'thank god that's over'.
(It does amuse me that numerous people seem to have thought this was a sci-fi book because there's an illustration of a spaceship on the cover of the US edition. Perhaps I should issue a disclaimer that it's not about dogs either?)
I received an advance review copy of Homesick For Another World from the publisher through NetGalley.
ERIN KELLY HAS DONE IT A-fucking-GAIN. This woman is a genius. She never disappoints.
I was a bit trepidatious about He Said/She Said: the title and itERIN KELLY HAS DONE IT A-fucking-GAIN. This woman is a genius. She never disappoints.
I was a bit trepidatious about He Said/She Said: the title and its accompanying tagline ('Who do you believe?') so obviously aim to evoke a Gone Girl-style marriage thriller in which you don't know whether to trust the word of the husband or the wife – a trend that's surely been done to death by now (no pun intended). But this book does not behave like that. Yes, there are segments narrated by a husband, and segments narrated by a wife; and there are flashbacks to 1999/2000, interspersed with scenes set in 2015. But Laura and Kit are a united front, not least because they both live in terror of being found by someone called Beth. To escape this person, they have changed their identities, moved house, even challenged a private detective to track them down using 'the paper trail of our previous lives' (he couldn't). They are fiercely protective of each other, and the only secrets they keep are little white lies.
The backdrop to all this is that Kit is an obsessive 'eclipse chaser'; since childhood, he has spent his life travelling all over the world to experience total eclipses from the best vantage points possible. With Laura heavily pregnant, he is heading to the Faroe Islands alone to witness the 2015 eclipse. Their separation marks the opening of a schism, though how and why won't be evident until much more detail has been uncovered. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious Laura and Kit's history with Beth involves them doing something good for her – in fact, they saved her. How could their relationship possibly have soured to the point that they not only want to avoid her, but live in fear of her? What did Beth do? Who is Jamie, another person from the past Laura keeps tabs on? The plot deepens and thickens with every chapter. It's not even clear who the 'he' and 'she' are in the context of the novel: Laura and Kit, or Beth and Jamie? Or both?
I'm not going to go into the plot any further than that. I think it's enough to say that it had me absolutely hooked from the word go and I finished it within 24 hours. It has the atmospheric throwback scenes of The Poison Tree combined with the knockout twists of The Burning Air, and the fine characterisation of all Kelly's novels. It's a complete emotional rollercoaster, drawing you into Laura and Kit's lives, constantly provoking difficult questions and making your loyalties and sympathies shift. I lost count of the number of times my heart dipped or soared while reading He Said/She Said. If you're a crime fan, a psychological thriller fan, and/or an Erin Kelly fan, you're going to want to read this asap.
P.S. the ending is fantastic.
I received an advance review copy of He Said/She Said from the publisher through NetGalley.
Simon Newman is described as an 'adrenaline junkie' in the blurb, but really he's more of a drifter who lets himself be persuaded into risky stunts bySimon Newman is described as an 'adrenaline junkie' in the blurb, but really he's more of a drifter who lets himself be persuaded into risky stunts by his best mate Thierry. (The two of them run a website, 'Journey to the Dark Side', a pre-clickbait-era 'geek' forum which has attained moderate popularity due to Simon and Thierry's penchant for adding their own commentary to creepy video footage. Due to being the fitter of the two and possessing some climbing experience, Simon tends to be the guinea pig for their expeditions.) At the beginning of The White Road, Simon is heading to Wales to explore a dangerous underground cave system – closed to the public for years after the death of a group of young cavers – with a dodgy guide he met online. Predictably, it all goes pretty badly wrong; Simon barely makes it out alive, and the trauma he experiences there will prove to be indelible.
But then the resulting footage goes viral. Journey to the Dark Side explodes, and suddenly its creators are minor celebrities. Thierry (who's one of those friends ex machina whose parents have bucketloads of money) convinces Simon they need to go big for their next stunt: Simon should attempt to climb Everest. So – partly because he doesn't have much else to do with his life – Simon dutifully heads off to Tibet to start training for the climb. Can he escape the spectre of his terrifying experience in Wales? (What do you think?) And what does his expedition have to do with the journal, written years earlier, of a professional climber named Juliet?
The White Road is a tale of perseverance and endurance, and it is a horror story. It inevitably reminded me of Michelle Paver's ghost stories Dark Matter and Thin Air, both of which revolve around similar expeditions. The challenges and conditions of mountain-climbing – the isolation enforced by a hostile environment, the confusion of altitude sickness, the darkness and cold and the frozen bodies left scattered across the landscape after failed expeditions – naturally lend themselves to ideas of shadowy figures, optical illusions, the mind playing tricks. If you've read anything else by Lotz, it will come as no surprise that such a master of atmosphere is adept at conjuring up incredibly eerie images and exploiting the full potential of such an inhospitable setting.
I spent the best part of Easter Monday curled up with The White Road and some Creme Eggs. I knew from the start that I'd want to read this book in one go, and it was the perfect accompaniment for a duvet day – gripping, chilling and absolutely absorbing. You're thrown into the action from the very beginning; it hits the ground running and never really stops. A welcome return to form (and first-person narration!) from Lotz after the lacklustre Day Four. I was so engrossed I didn't even mind the fact that the black page edges on the paperback proof left ink stains all over my hands.
I received an advance review copy of The White Road from the publisher, Hodder & Stoughton.