RaveThe Paris ReviewMoshfegh’s protagonist is brutally dreary, and the brutality of her dreariness is often very funny, but the book is really quite serious ... The book seems to anchor itself to “real” experiences of pain and to validate itself by their relevance (the death of the protagonist’s parents, for instance, or the looming attack). But it is mostly, almost by juxtaposition, about the realness of a more subtle and very private expression of pain, no matter the cause, no matter how seemingly trivial. That’s what kept me reading even as my cringing muscles grew sore: feeling in my screwed-up face, barked laughs, and watery eyes the translation of that private kind of pain into something I could share.
