"I spent a lot of time staring at [Whoopi Goldberg] on screen and picturing her vagina. Solid, honest, magenta."

I don't know why but that line doubled me over. It's the sort of humor I've always been drawn to. Enough tension between earnestness and irony that it is neither one nor the other; it is both. That is the sense I had overall when reading Moshfegh's novel. I've read comparison's to the old HBO show Girls and I think that's apt, though for whatever reason I appreciated this novel a lot more than I ever appreciated Girls, which I found lacking in enough substance to justify it's privileged and vacant characters.

There are themes in this novel that are peculiar and I haven't thought enough about them to decide whether they are illusory or profound, but I did appreciate the lack of tidy epiphanies and Moshfegh's instinct to counter reader expectations just enough to keep things interesting.

I recommend this as a solid summer read. Easy to digest, entertaining in more than a few parts, and written by an author intellectual enough to make interesting provocations.