
Lapvona
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Ottessa Moshfegh
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By:
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Ottessa Moshfegh
About this listen
An Instant New York Times Bestseller!
“Lapvona flips all the conventions of familial and parental relations, putting hatred where love should be or a negotiation where grief should be . . . Through a mix of witchery, deception, murder, abuse, grand delusion, ludicrous conversations, and cringeworthy moments of bodily disgust, Moshfegh creates a world that you definitely don’t want to live in, but from which you can’t look away.” —The Atlantic
In a village buffeted by natural disasters, a motherless shepherd boy finds himself part of a power struggle that puts the community’s faith to a savage test, in a spellbinding novel that represents Ottessa Moshfegh’s most exciting leap yet
Little Marek, the abused and delusional son of the village shepherd, believes his mother died giving birth to him. One of Marek’s few consolations is his enduring bond with the blind village midwife, Ina, who suckled him when he was a baby. For some people, Ina’s ability to receive transmissions of sacred knowledge from the natural world is a godsend. For others, Ina’s home in the woods is a godless place.
The people’s desperate need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is put to a cruel test by their depraved lord and governor, especially in this year of record drought and famine. But when fate brings Marek into violent proximity to the lord’s family, new and occult forces arise to upset the old order. By year’s end, the veil between blindness and sight, life and death, and the natural world and the spirit world will prove to be very thin indeed.
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“Moshfegh expertly creates a world with its own superstitions and laws, both timeless and topical.” —Oprah Daily
“The author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, EW's pick for the best book of 2018, turns her inimitable lens to a medieval fiefdom ruled by deeply tribal ideas of class, family, and faith. The result reads like a cracked fairy tale, both familiar and fantastically strange (June 21).” —Entertainment Weekly, 16 novels we're excited for this summer
“No one is quite who he first seems in the latest wicked tale from macabre master Moshfegh . . . Sculpting an eerily canny fabular world of contrasts and evil, cartoonish cruelty, in her signature way, Moshfegh conjures a grotesque, disturbing story of gross inequality and senseless strife.” —Booklist
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-
Story
Dead things have been found in the fields of Enfaire, a God-fearing town north of Reams. Not just dead things, but twisted forms…unholy shapes. And there are rumors of a blasphemous union and of fell creatures that haunt the night. Yet even as plague and witch pyres blacken the sky, the town remains untouched by the malady that has already claimed thousands and will claim thousands more. It is here, in Enfaire, that an old Franciscan friar and his ward take shelter from a storm. It is here, in a little town on the edge of civilization, that they will have their faith truly tested.
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Quite a mix.
- By Michael S. Henderson on 10-09-24
By: Mitchell Luthi
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Boy Parts
- By: Eliza Clark
- Narrated by: Eliza Clark
- Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina's relationship with her obsessive best friend and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention....
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Awful Main Character made the book almost unbearable
- By C Johnson on 07-13-23
By: Eliza Clark
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A Certain Hunger
- By: Chelsea G. Summers
- Narrated by: Hillary Huber
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Original Recording
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Eat Pray Love meets American Psycho in a seductive and sinister debut literary thriller. Food critic Dorothy Daniels indulges in her homicidal urges by murdering her lovers and devouring their organs in this intense, visceral, and lushly told tale of food, sex, power, and the pursuit of a very particular taste set between New York and Italy. Please Note: A Certain Hunger contains adult language and depictions of violence. Discretion is advised.
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Ugh.
- By Kimberly on 02-03-20
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The Laws of the Skies
- By: Gregoire Courtois, Rhonda Mullins - translator
- Narrated by: Daniel Matmor
- Length: 4 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive. The Laws of the Skies tells the harrowing story of those days in the woods, of illness and accidents, and of a murderous child.
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Couldn’t finish
- By Amazon Customer on 12-27-22
By: Gregoire Courtois, and others
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Hurricane Season
- By: Fernanda Melchor, Sophie Hughes - translator
- Narrated by: Inés del Castillo, Tim Pabon, Ana Osorio
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The Witch is dead. And the discovery of her corpse - by a group of children playing near the irrigation canals - propels the whole village into an investigation of how and why this murder occurred. Rumors and suspicions spread. As the novel unfolds in a dazzling linguistic torrent, with each unreliable narrator lingering on new details, new acts of depravity or brutality, Melchor extracts some tiny shred of humanity from these characters that most would write off as utterly irredeemable, forming a lasting portrait of a damned Mexican village.
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Wow
- By Anonymous User on 11-20-20
By: Fernanda Melchor, and others
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Ripe
- A Novel
- By: Sarah Rose Etter
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets.
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EG, Sorry to say it doesn't get any better
- By Alexis_Vandew on 08-18-23
By: Sarah Rose Etter
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Death in Her Hands
- A Novel
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Ann Marie Lee
- Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one. Becoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate.
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Omg get ON with it
- By Nicole Dreyfus on 06-24-20
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
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Tender Is the Flesh
- By: Agustina Bazterrica
- Narrated by: Joseph Balderrama
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans - though no one calls them that anymore. His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the "Transition". Now, eating human meat - "special meat" - is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.
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Uhhhhhhh....
- By Josh E. on 12-05-20
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Grimoire
- Dark Fiction & Horror Anthology, Volume 1
- By: Mitchell Luthi, C. L. Werner, Madison Kilian, and others
- Narrated by: Anna Capraro, Scott Miller
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Like the tanning of a leathered corpse, the inaugural release of Grimoire seeks to stretch the fleshy bounds of dark fiction and horror. Included within these unhallowed book are tales of medieval horror and cacophony, Lovecraftian delights and wretched Kaiju, accursed djinn and pestilential priests, all brought together for the very first time in one horrific collection. Engaging and provocative, these tales of the damned stalk the graveyards at night, crawl up from the empty and wet places of this world, and haunt the dreams of all who hear them.
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Grimoir and All His angels
- By Amanda DeLaney on 07-09-24
By: Mitchell Luthi, and others
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A Touch of Jen
- By: Beth Morgan
- Narrated by: Casey Turner
- Length: 9 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Remy and Alicia, a couple of insecure service workers, are not particularly happy together. But they are bound by a shared obsession with Jen, a beautiful former coworker of Remy’s who now seems to be following her bliss as a globe-trotting jewelry designer. In and outside the bedroom, Remy and Alicia's entire relationship revolves around fantasies of Jen, whose every Instagram caption, outfit, and new age mantra they know by heart. Imagine their confused excitement when they run into Jen, in the flesh, and she invites them on a surfing trip to the Hamptons.
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Speechless
- By Schabel on 07-16-21
By: Beth Morgan
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Maeve Fly
- By: CJ Leede
- Narrated by: Sosie Bacon
- Length: 7 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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By day, Maeve Fly works at the happiest place in the world as every child’s favorite ice princess. By the neon night glow of the Sunset Strip, Maeve haunts the dive bars with a drink in one hand and a book in the other, imitating her misanthropic literary heroes. But when Gideon Green—her best friend’s brother—moves to town, he awakens something dangerous within her, and the world she knows suddenly shifts beneath her feet. Untethered, Maeve ditches her discontented act and tries on a new persona.
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femme fatale meets psycho killer
- By Vivian on 07-24-23
By: CJ Leede
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Fragile Animals
- By: Genevieve Jagger
- Narrated by: Isobel Wood
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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When an ex-catholic woman develops a sexual relationship with a vampire, she is forced to confront the memories that haunt her religious past. Struggling to deal with the familial trauma of her Catholic upbringing, hotel cleaner, Noelle, travels to the Isle of Bute. There, she meets a man who claims to be a vampire, and a relationship blooms between them based solely on confession.
By: Genevieve Jagger
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McGlue
- A Novella
- By: Ottessa Moshfegh
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 3 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk 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.
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Ultra-sensory tale of a sailor
- By Rogerio Lira on 12-01-20
By: Ottessa Moshfegh
The beginning got me
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Wow
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Good read
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Vile
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Underwhelming
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Now, the book... what a doozie. Lots of people will not like this book. Check all the trigger warnings for this one. I was impressed with the beauty and gore of this book. Story wise, it was all over the board, following several characters, none of which are particularly likeable. I wasn't routing for any of them to succeed, and I'm glad it ended the way that it did! I said what I said.
I listened to this book because someone said it would make a good A24 film. I can see why, but also, I don't think I want to see any of that with my eyeballs. The images in my head were disturbing enough! With that said, this really isn't that disgusting... there are plenty of horrendous scenes, but it's so beautifully written that my mind didn't comprehend the gore!
Check trigger warnings!
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Characters have complex and full-bodied development and tensions both with others, and God. In fact, a character's personal relationship with God and the church is one of the more thoughtful forms of development.
Not all is explained in this book, and strange occurrences are sometimes left for the reader to construe. The book seems almost non-fiction, if it weren't for the actions of the character Ena, who appears to be some sort of witch critical to the story's advancement.
Some points of contention: The swapping of perspectives between characters can be confusing, especially since the author for the most part uses the same voice throughout. The ending leaves something to be desired, and the pacing of the book felt off. The meat of the book is in the first two parts, where it then slows down considerably, losing a bit of its unique agrarian charm to focus on relationships within the village keep, which isn't as exciting as I find it overdone in mainstream media.
weird, disgusting, unfortunate, and symbolic
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Loneliness
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Depravity
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Well written. Not for everyone, but if it’s for you, you’ll give it 4 stars.
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