Alexia Pop – Lapvona: A Guided Tour of Medieval Misery

Alexia Pop – Lapvona: A Guided Tour of Medieval Misery

Lapvona: A Guided Tour of Medieval Misery

Ottessa Moshfegh, Lapvona, Penguin, New York, 2022  

Welcome to Lapvona! I am your guide and the first attraction of today’s tour is Jude’s pasture, where the local livestock will help obscure the pungent smell of decay, followed by a lovely walk up the hill to beloved Lord Villiam’s manor. Remember to watch your step and mind the scattered corpses.   

This is the creepy atmosphere which awaits the unsuspecting reader of Otessa Mosfegh’s Lapvona – a world so steeped in misery that it borders on absurdity, inhabited by a string of one-dimensional characters teeming with malice and barely concealed madness. An established force in contemporary fiction through novels such as Eileen (2015, Penguin) and My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018, Penguin), Moshfegh’s boundary-pushing discourse morphs in Lapvona into a comedic overwrought parade of cruelty.  Generally acclaimed as historical fiction, the 2022 novel refracts Moshfegh’s grotesque sensibilities through the lens of a medieval setting that had initially promised a subversive exploration of faith, corruption and despair, but instead delivers a hallow tableau of agony and chaos lacking the emotional marrow to sustain it. 

At a quick glance, the medieval milieu appears to be a well-crafted setting for the plague-ridden, famine-stricken titular village ruled by cartoonishly corrupt aristocrats. However, the novel’s structure amplifies its shortcomings, catalyzing a cumulative surge of the macabre. The narrative, divided by seasonally-themed chapters (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter), tracks the chronological development of a rogues’ gallery of carnivalesque caricatures, ranging from a sadistic lord to a blind witchy midwife. Although initially promising vessels for portraying the vices that Moshfegh endeavors to explore -greed, fanaticism and suffering-, the characters’ lack of complexity ultimately defeats the purpose. The supposed protagonist, Marek, a disfigured shepherd boy, never truly gained my sympathy, despite being a child swept up in Lapvona’s whirlwind of horror. He is painfully inaccessible, and the occasional glimmer of compassion quickly fades once the harshness of his circumstances is overshadowed by his distasteful attitude. His character does, indeed, spark an emotional response that fluctuates between pity and discomfort, never quite settling on either, with the ambiguity failing to sustain any real interest in the character’s inevitably bleak fate. 

Arguably, the major flaw of the novel is its thematic incoherence. The narrative becomes so consumed with deeply diving into the macabre that characters are left afloat, underdeveloped and superficial, and the weighty potential of the themes drown beneath waves of brutality. The novel flirts with lofty philosophical ideas, such as faith and power, which are left half-explored to give way to a tiresome cycle of violence. Eager for existential satiation, I found myself, much like Lapvona’s inhabitants, hungrier than ever before. The novel’s thematic disarray is compounded by its use of humor, if one can call it that. Moshefegh’s dark satire, so praised by readers in her previous works, reaches another stumbling block. The nuances of the author’s comedic sensibilities are either excessively muted or blatantly exaggerated, fostering a facile social critique that fails to match the depth of Moshfegh’s earlier success. There’s an absence of the biting, surreal wit that made My Year of Rest and Relaxation so effective; in Lapvona, the tonal inconsistency weakens the overall impact, rendering the novel neither effective as satire nor as a grim meditation on human suffering. 

Despite its hyperfocus on the repulsive, Lapvona’s disturbingly vivid world is yet undoubtedly deserving of praise. Moshfegh’s key strength comes into play when her distinctive creative vision gives way to a visceral physicality, a setting so skillfully crafted that it feels almost inescapable. The author’s attention to detail creates an atmosphere as unrelenting as it is immersive, making Lapvona a novel so palpable that it becomes almost impossible to put down. 

I will consequently recommend Lapvona with strong reservations. It is a truly brutal and haunting read and those seeking a coherent plot driven by multifaceted characters will probably be disappointed. Instead, those who take delight in the macabre may find a certain dark allure here, even though the novel prioritizes shock value, bodily fluids, and spiritual desolation over anything else. Overall, Lapvona feels like an overcooked steak: a promising idea, but ultimately hard to swallow and difficult to digest. 

Echinox

Echinox este revista de cultură a studenţilor din Universitatea „Babeş-Bolyai”. Apare din decembrie 1968.

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