PositiveLos Angeles Review of BooksThe novel starts with bandits and slaughtering, but there’s more to Lapvona than death and gore. In it, the Middle Ages become a new container for old Moshfeghian themes: God, corruption, greed, sex, daddy issues, mommy issues, booze. The time period gives Moshfegh free rein to play with mystical characters like Ina, a blind wet nurse who breastfeeds the village children ... It’s a bleak, chaotic world where the rules mean nothing, and God acts like a cover for the lord’s lies. It should be exhausting (and sometimes it is, the bleakness teetering on horror), but Moshfegh leaves us her breadcrumbs of wit. You want more and more, hoping they’ll lead to a candy house of moral lessons. Reading Lapvona is like going to Medieval Times in Buena Park for a middle school field trip: you’re uncomfortable and confused, but you can’t look away. You’re not sure what’s a joke and you’re holding a turkey leg. The book’s epigraph is a song lyric by Demi Lovato ... This voice is blunt and brutal. Her prose is also uncomplicated. It retains a sense of distance while gently dipping into the characters’ psyches. The effect is almost folkloric.
