And I hate everyone but Marek. Marek is the only character of this book that I don’t hate. And I don’t not hate him because he is a character that I like, or would normally like. Usually I would not like his character, but the fact that every single other sad sack of a character in this story hates him makes me like him out of spite to them. They blame him, and only him, for their own sad lives and bad tempers. The fact that every single character in this book (except Marek) has the same essential disposition, honestly made it boring. There were no characters that inspired me to read further, had me invested, made me think in new ways, had me curious about them. They were all vain, selfish, immature, with an astounding number of large beams in their eyes. All of them were the same person except Marek.

I have read all of Mossfegh’s other books (except for Eileen) and I liked them. They were fun and especially good when I have angst that I need a direction for. I was sort of expecting this book to feel similarly, with maybe a few more extra fucky elements. But imagine you erase everything good about a book and just leave the fucky elements..that’s this book.

I just don’t know why I’m supposed to care about any of these characters. Being inside of their one singular mind was so unpleasant that I thought about DNFing multiple times.

Villiam…. Probably the most annoying character I have ever read about. I started to notice that whenever something might go wrong at the manor and upset the status quo, or cause Villiam to be suspicious about something, he just didn’t care. I actually began to think that he has an intellectual disability that we are not privy to (since we don’t have access to his thoughts, or we do but they are so shallow that we essentially don’t) and for this reason he does not understand the world around him and is unable to engage with it in a meaningful or logical way. I can’t think of any other explanation for this character.

I also wish we had more of an explanation of these people’s religion. If I’m not misremembering, we don’t get anything and we are told that this is Christianity. I can see how this IS Christianity, or a representation of it, but it is definitely an “extreme” form that deserves some explanation. The people are constantly self-flagellating (literally), asking for and receiving abuse, raping, murdering, pedophiling, incesting, literally always thinking about how they can suffer more and comparing themselves to others thinking they are more or less pious than them… This is enjoyable in books if done right imo, give me an explanation or a motive and I will be a happy gal amongst the depravity.

Maybe my overall complaint is that the story isn’t fleshed out enough. The priest actually being a villain and scamming all the people into suffering to increase his personal wealth is a great idea for a character, but in this book it’s such a caricature. It’s like a bad action movie where there are no motives for anyone’s actions, the good people just cower and cry while the villains do bad things and creepily laugh as they sneak through the village type of thing.

I guess I’m just not sure wtf the point of this book was. It had really strong potential in the beginning but by page 178 when the characters still had not developed at all and the plot was kind of stagnating I finally decided to write this review. The story was annoying me so much. I’m going to go back and finish it now, but I don’t think this review is going to change at all.

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Spoilers: this is what I think is going to happen for the rest of the book (I will surely go to heaven if I finish the rest of it)

Luka and Dibra will be murdered and prepared to be cannibalized. After they are murdered the rain starts again so their deaths were for nothing and people eat their bodies anyway, in order to fuck over their neighbors somehow (by saving currency on meals they have more bargaining power for example).
The blind wet nurse is going to find her powers again from cannibalism and will continue the practice long after the droughts are over.
Villiam will just keep being… Villiam
Agata will stay at the manor because she lives so well there. The entertainment she provides will be abusing Marek and it will be hilarious to Villiam, and Marek will finally be happy that he is going to heaven again. He might be killed through this abuse. Agata will take Marek’s virginity, maybe in front of Villiam, she will birth a human but everyone will believe it is some strange creature. Villiam will be delighted.
Lispeth will stage her death so that essentially Marek kills her (but he will be forced to or does it by accident) so that she won’t have died by her own hand (and will still be eligible for heaven) but will be able to join Jacob in the afterlife.
The villagers will recover and live as normal in the village. Jude will have fallen down in the forest and essentially died, but once it rains it will get into his mouth and revive him. He will go back home, and eventually will die a horrifying death that he will be happy about and not think critically or come to any realization at the end of his life.
Something will happen with the Priest and with Villiam to disrupt things a bit. I wouldn’t be surprised if the priest gets tired of all of this and tries to kill Villiam maybe, but I’m not sure. The reason why I’m going to stick with this book is because something just has to happen….I couldn’t believe that it’s just these characters self-flagellating and gossiping and abusing each other for the rest of the book. There has to be something that happens!!

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