In Search of a HORROR-ible Book

Last summer as I was rummaging through old copies of The New York Times Book Review, I came across a review of a most unusual book. It sounded like a creepy fairy tale set in a medieval village, but it was grimmer(and grosser) than anything the Brothers Grimm could have possibly imagined. It was THAT weirdly horrible.

So repulsively disgusting were these characters and their bizarre activities that this fictional offering could only be classified under the horror genre.

Even the reviewer himself admitted to losing track of ALL the atrocities he’d found in this book. And we’re not talking about a few bloody decapitations here and there. We’re talking about the all-out, almost unthinkable, stuff of nightmares. Like the blind, really sopping wet, wet nurse who lives in a cave and smokes a pipe that used to be somebody’s arm. Like the villagers who keep snacking on dead spiders and keep throwing them up. Bad enough to have cannibals in your story, but these cannibals chow down, then cough up little pinkie toes. Oh, and I almost forgot about the hapless servant who was forced to swallow a grape that the deformed “hero” rubbed on his anus.

Even describing this book as a “Hansel and Gretel meet Stephen King” saga doesn’t do justice…not to Stephen King, that is. At least King knows how to horrify readers in a way that keeps them reading — and buying — his books. With King, there’s also a deliberate M.O. to his creativity. If he can’t terrorize you, he’ll horrify you. If he can’t horrify you, he’ll go for the big gross-out. He’ll creep you out, but he’ll do it with some intelligence, restraint, and imagination.

With this author, however, it seems like creeping out readers only means accumulating mega gross-outs — lots and lots of sickening mega gross-outs.

At least that’s what captivated and disgusted that reviewer in question here.

Needless to say, I wasn’t interested at all in reading such a book. And yet, because I am a true satirist at heart, I was repulsed and strangely fascinated by it. My curiosity got the better of my aesthetic sensibilities: I wanted to see if this novel was really as sickening and as repulsive as this reviewer had described. Maybe there was some hidden theme or premise that had escaped critical analysis. Maybe this author couldn’t develop her message in the way she’d initially planned.

That’s right, the author was a woman, not a man…which raises another question. Why do so many women who write become attracted to this particular genre?

Come to think of it, I shouldn’t have wondered about it that much. After all, Mary Shelley did write Frankenstein in stark contrast to her husband Percy’s romantic poetry. Besides, this is 2023, almost 2024. Women can write about whatever they choose, of course, in whatever way they want.

And yet, I can’t help but wonder why this particular author living in our modern age of the 21st Century had chosen(what seems to be) such a reprehensibly disturbing and weird novel. Why? More significantly, why had such a novel even gotten published? And, how many readers had actually read this book? How many copies were sold?

Did it only come out in hardcover?

Unfortunately, I had no idea what the names of this book or author or publishing house were. I had recycled the book review that had listed all this essential information.

And that serious lack of information, dear readers, is the stuff of headaches for reference librarians and bookstore employees. As in, “Can you help me find this book? I don’t know the title or author, but it’s really horrible and villagers are vomiting dead spiders and pinkie toes, and one guy is rubbing grapes on his butt.”

After I decided not to bother any of those beleaguered worker bees, the AHA! light bulb turned on. What about using the INTERNET!

As overwhelmed and discouraged as I was, I wrote out this descriptive question on a little piece of paper:
What is the name of this gory horror novel set in Eastern Europe and written by an Eastern European woman?

Then I gave it to BFF, the ace research assistant and “Never-say-it’s-impossible-to-find” guy.

“Look,” I told him, “I know this is a crazy request. You probably won’t find it. It’s an impossible task. I don’t expect much, but give it a try.”

He did.

In less than 2 minutes, all the info I’d wanted appeared on the screen! Lapvona was the title. Ottessa Moshfegh was the author. Penguin Press was the publisher. Unbelievable! He actually found everything I’d needed with very few clues or data from me. Technically speaking, this book might not have been that gory, either. From what I’d gathered from the review, it sounded more repugnant and disgusting and weird than just plain old gory. That’s what makes this whole incident more horrific than any novel anyone could fabricate.

Not only is it possible now to easily to find out information about anything and everything, we don’t even need to know very much at all in order to get the answers we seek. Data that seemed impossible to retrieve only a few years ago is now literally available for everyone to obtain. Even the most clueless, even the most ignorant among us, can get any kind of information.

And that, dear readers, can be more disturbing, more horrifying than Lapvona or any other weird tale.

Be afraid, be very afraid.