What a WEIRD book, and yet another in the long list of books that could best be deemed “female friends who should really not be friends anymore.” Reva, you deserve so much better! Narrator, I don’t think you deserve worse but you definitely need someone different in your life to zhush it up.
It’s becoming a bit of a cliche that every novel I read immediately prompts a slew of “oh it reminded me of-” reminiscing. Such is the champagne problem of reading a lot, and of having skipped some foundational texts the first time they came around. Moshfegh wrote this in 2018, which isn’t even that long ago, but it’s solidly in the middle of the “unlikeable anti-hero main character” arc which, it could be argued, saw its Renaissance with one Walter White of Breaking Bad fame. So–that the main character is pretty solidly, unredeemably unlikeable? Not quite as radical a premise anymore.
Women can do anything men can do, including writing navel gazing novels that test the patience of their readers. I genuinely fell asleep for a total of 45 minutes while trying to read the last ~10 minutes of this book, and that’s the part where the spoilery bits happen! (caveat that perhaps the spoilery bit isn’t so much a spoiler given that the blurb literally notes “It’s the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?”)
But as a portrait of depression, and the ennui that prevents you from even taking concrete steps to fix said ennui? The tortured relationship with the narrator and her walking lawsuit of a psychiatrist? There’s an element of the ridiculous and caricature throughout this novel, which makes the narrator’s world seem even more manic. If my friend was like Reva, if my boyfriend was like Patrick Bateman, if my psychiatrist was like this, I think I’d want a break from my life as well.