“In literature there’s a perversely refreshing counteroffensive of odiferous refuseniks, a burgeoning genre you could call Repulsive Realism,” writes Hillary Kelly for Vulture. “The pioneer and reigning queen of this trendlet is Ottessa Moshfegh.” Kelly goes on to look at other “Repulsive Realism” reads, such as the recent Halle Butler novel, The New Me, and Melissa Broder’s The Pisces, books in which bad sex and unwashed armpits run rampart and “the characters manufacture their own mire and swim around in it [and] rebel against the packaging of femininity and the oppression of the lacquered image.”
The Queens of Repulsive Realism
