Homesick For Another World, by Ottessa Moshfegh

[landingtree]

I read the first story in this book and thought, 'I don't see why I'd read another one', and then I read the second story and thought, 'Well certainly I'll want to space them out', and now two days later I've read them all.

My aunt A used to be visited by cousin B whenever he was in town for a conference. He received no invitation, and gave no warning; he would arrive in the early afternoon, and would not leave until five hours later once he had been served dinner. None of the usual hints that it was time to go worked. Having figured out the schedule of his conferences, my aunt A began buying the lowest-quality mince from the butcher, and serving it to the whole family on toast on the nights of cousin B's visits, without sauce or salt. After a few of these meals, the visits ceased.

Imagine whole lives that are like that all the time, and you'll have these short stories. Except often more R-rated, (I assume those anecdotes happen in my family too, I just haven't heard them), and with sharp class distinctions (I have no information on the financial position of Cousin B except for what's implied by 'in town for a conference'). This book of stories abridges human life, seldom feeling like parody by addition, but paring off most of the stuff that make it feel sensible while it's underway. There's not a lot of closure here. Stories may end with change or resolution, but they may just end at the point when the water is clear enough that you can see the sunken object from all angles. There's a lot of humour in them, and cruelty, and contempt, and... not kindness really, but some of the possible ways things can go well when you see humans in the round.

There are lines and moments when it falls over the line of believability for me and I think: this isn't humans anymore, the acid-pitted glass I'm looking through is now doing too much work. If there's one thing I find particularly hard to read, it's the contempt felt by the various narrators and protagonists - contempt for people's appearance, intelligence, weight, poverty, wealth. I sometimes thought, 'Yes, I get it, this is too much.' Though often the person the contempt is directed at is the narrator's mirror, only the narrator can't notice: an irony I didn't get tired of.

There are three stories here about men experiencing love at first sight, and the bizarre, cruel, threatening, and/or simply oblivious things they do in response. By the third one I was thinking 'How many of these will there be?' but that story seemed to know I was thinking it, and went off in a different direction.

There is a story in this book where a young man (who has an eating disorder) and his beloved uncle (who has a colostomy bag) eat cakes together, and the complete matter-of-factness with which they then go and deal with their mirrored digestive problems before getting on with the rest of their morning came across to me as both funny and touching. I trust these stories to do that. YMMV.

Comments

[rushthatspeaks]

I should read more Ottessa Moshfegh. I am still on some level trying to parse everything I got out of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which was the best SF novel of its year; the one thing I am relatively sure of is that the cruelty is easy for Moshfegh, and it's the kindness she has to put in the work for. But she always does put in the work.

[landingtree]

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is the only other book of hers I've read, and in one way it went down easy, but in another it didn't stick, I didn't speak its language. I want to go back to it now, because I think these stories will help me with it. That's well-put, about kindness and cruelty.