Ottessa Moshfegh

A fateful year in the life of a thirteen-year-old shepherd's son living in Lapvona, a fiefdom ruled by a corrupt, incompetent and feckless lord.

"A lonely young woman working in a boys' prison outside Boston in the early 60s is pulled into a very strange crime, in a mordant, harrowing story of obsession and suspense"--

Features stories, in which the flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful, but beauty comes from strange sources. In this book, the author shows us uncomfortable things, and makes us look at them forensically - until we find, suddenly, that we are really looking at ourselves.

"McGlue is in the hold, too drunk from the night before to be sure of name or situation or orientation--he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety. A sail on the seas of literary tradition, Moshfegh gives us a nasty heartless blackguard, a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection."--Page 4 of cover.

After decades of working with his father-in-law and witnessing the outfitting of his home with possessions he doesn't care for, Larry fully realizes how little he loves his wife after she dies unexpectedly. But life only continues in a similar vein when Larry, having taken work in a facility for adults with moderate developmental disabilities, takes his charges on an ill-fated field trip to Hooters.

It's early 2000 on New York City's Upper East Side, and the alienation of Moshfegh's unnamed young protagonist from others is nearly complete when she initiates her yearlong siesta, during which time she experiences limited personal interactions. Her parents have died; her relationships with her bulimic best friend Reva, an ex-boyfriend, and her drug-pushing psychiatrist are unwholesome. As her pill-popping intensifies, so does her isolation and determination to leave behind the world's travails. She is also beset by dangerous blackouts induced by a powerful medication.