Not Up To My Expectations!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                          There was much to anticipate, for a reader, such as I, who loved Ottessa Moshfegh's chilling first novel, "Eileen."  Though this recent work received mixed reviews, when it came out, it earned a place on "The New York Times 100 Most Notable Books List."  But it did not turn out to be at all what I was expecting.

                                             Just from the cover, I was expecting a different time period--say of a Grecian era.  Instead, I get the tale of a nameless (this gimmick of the nameless narrator has got to stop; no one worked it as well as Daphne Du Maurier in "Rebecca," and that is where it should have ended!) narrator, an Upper East Side woman, Columbia graduate, art gallery worker, wealthy parents--you know, the whole package--who suffers ennui, and decides to spend a year of her life sleeping.  The cocktail mixtures she uses to put her into this state would amaze a pharmacist, let alone the  reader, that she would survive.  Next to her kvetching, is her friend Reva, whose problems start from hailing from Long Island, and, like all desperate suburbanites who come to New York (and I was one!) want desperately to assume the cosmopolitan persona they have invented for themselves.  At least, she is not checking out.  Having recently come off the depressing "When All Is Said," I was afraid the heroine was going to take the same path, but when she emerges from her year, it really does not look like she has anything to show for it.  What a bummer!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                               The novel is only 288 pages. It starts out promisingly, but conveys the ennui of its characters so well, the reader feels their pain, and by more than halfway through, the book becomes a tedious slog, which I wish could have ended earlier.

                                                 Skip this one, dolls.  If you want to read Moshfegh at her best, read "Eileen."  It has better character and narrative development.

                                                  Her current novel is one big snooze!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!