Patrick Carey

I mean, I think it's this ability that he has to sort of stitch kind of transcendent language into talking about quite mundane and sometimes risque topics.

He just speaks so beautifully.

He writes so beautifully about everything.

I felt moved pretty consistently throughout the book.

Yeah, I think he's amazing.

Oh, thanks for having me.

I mean, I think alienation is one way of putting it.

She's definitely tapped into some kind of disaffection or existential bleakness, to put it frankly, that is one of the motivating energies of our age.

Her books are often very cruel and painfully honest.

But I mean, her characters often are lonely people at odds with the world who are unhappy.

So perhaps alienation is the right word.

That's right.

I think there is some kind of damage at the heart of modern society that Moschweg is very sensitive to, and it really is a consistent theme in all of her works.

I mean, especially if you look at something like My Year of Rest and Relaxation, which was the novel that preceded this one, which is about essentially a woman who drugs herself into an induced coma to avoid dealing with life.

Her prose is, it shouldn't work, but it does.

So I know, I can understand your concern or your hesitation.

Resistance, yeah.

Because even someone listening to this chat will have already picked up words like bleak and painful and cruel.

It doesn't sound like the most pleasant reading experience, but there's something gripping about her prose.

and her insight that really drags you in.