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Offseason
A blisteringly funny and transcendently deranged debut novel following a young woman who takes a job at an all-girls boarding school in a small coastal town to teach English literature—and to try, desperately, to escape the trap that is herself.
In Avigayl Sharp’s brilliant and bold debut novel, Offseason, our fiercely observant but self-deluded narrator finds herself teaching at an all-girls boarding school on the Eastern Seaboard. In between manic lectures that veer from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House to the childhood maltreatment of her beloved Iosif Stalin and the generational legacy of the Holocaust, she consorts and canoodles with the town’s locals—including the possibly disgraced male teacher whose job she’s taken over—implicating everyone she meets in her obsessive quest to pin down where, exactly, her own life went wrong.
Though she's vowed never to return to her hometown in the middle of the country, the holiday season sends her careening back into the orbit of her overbearing, maladjusted family. Drunk at a bar on the frigid afternoon of the seventh night of Chanukah, she encounters the figure from her adolescence who may or may not be responsible for violating her, bringing her down, and ruining her life. The past collides with the present—but catharsis and closure are nowhere to be found. Not at the bar. Not in her childhood home. And certainly not in the unruly spirals of her mind.
Serious yet irreverent with a delirious velocity, Offseason reimagines the conversation around trauma while reckoning with the doomed project of “speaking your truth,” the compulsion to repeat, and whether we can be transformed by art and love.
In Avigayl Sharp’s brilliant and bold debut novel, Offseason, our fiercely observant but self-deluded narrator finds herself teaching at an all-girls boarding school on the Eastern Seaboard. In between manic lectures that veer from Charles Dickens’s Bleak House to the childhood maltreatment of her beloved Iosif Stalin and the generational legacy of the Holocaust, she consorts and canoodles with the town’s locals—including the possibly disgraced male teacher whose job she’s taken over—implicating everyone she meets in her obsessive quest to pin down where, exactly, her own life went wrong.
Though she's vowed never to return to her hometown in the middle of the country, the holiday season sends her careening back into the orbit of her overbearing, maladjusted family. Drunk at a bar on the frigid afternoon of the seventh night of Chanukah, she encounters the figure from her adolescence who may or may not be responsible for violating her, bringing her down, and ruining her life. The past collides with the present—but catharsis and closure are nowhere to be found. Not at the bar. Not in her childhood home. And certainly not in the unruly spirals of her mind.
Serious yet irreverent with a delirious velocity, Offseason reimagines the conversation around trauma while reckoning with the doomed project of “speaking your truth,” the compulsion to repeat, and whether we can be transformed by art and love.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published May 5, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
March 10, 2026
If Selin, the protagonist of Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, instead of being a naive, idealistic, anxious Harvard freshman, was instead a 28 year-old English literature grad program dropout, recently post-romantic breakup, at the nadir of the severest Quarterlife Crisis Self-Loathing, with an bad Adderall addiction and an unhealthy, bordering on Stockholm Syndrome obsession with IOSIF (iykyk) Vissarionovich Stalin — plus, her whole narrative had been written not in the style of The Idiot, but rather more in that of Ducks, Newburyport, or for that matter, Virginia Woolf if she had just read the oeuvre of Ottessa Moshfegh, and if Moshfegh’s protagonist of My Year of Rest and Relaxation had just dropped out of grad school, moved to the country, and obtained a new ill-advised job Guiding the Youth before deciding to spend a year in a drug-addled haze — then we might have something like this book.
(I’ve promised myself to stop referencing both Ducks, Newburyport and Ottessa Moshfegh in my reviews, but this won’t be the time.)
But to quote Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation: “Education is directly proportional to anxiety,” and indeed, Offseason, which I would label as Interior Dark (Comedic) Academia, may best be appreciated by readers like myself who have spent some time in grad school, whether successfully or not, particularly for literature or philosophy, but anywhere in the liberal arts and humanities realm, and belatedly or not so belatedly realized that this was likely the worst environment in the world for them, like total raging Inner Demons Fuel. As my first high school boyfriend told me when he broke up with me, in a remark that was devastating at the time but likely prescient, “You think too much.”
The unnamed narrator of Offseason certainly thinks too much, mostly delusionally by this point, as she ships herself off to self-imposed exile on an eastern US seaboard island to teach at a mid-level girls’ boarding school, like Jane Eyre’s cousin with a bad Eeyore complex. Instead of fleeing Lowood, but for some similar reasons, she is fleeing her Chicago family home, where she has recently crash-landed post-crisis after having sworn that ever to do so would constitute a fate worse than death. Unlike Jane, the narrator is not an orphan, although she seems to believe she may as well be, but rather is the daughter of a Russian-speaking Jewish mother, who immigrated from Soviet Lithuania and is prone to rapid emotional vicissitudes, and a father who is sort of on Mildly Anxious Hovering Management Standby Mode. (And a sister who is an MMA fighter.) There is also a mysterious ex who seems to be her most secure tether to reality and hope, as evidenced by his ability to have remained in the grad program from which she has, with equal mystery, ejected.
“Offseason” is such an appropriate title for this narrative, because during this lost, shut-down period of her life, our narrator spends a weird two semesters in stasis at this weird little old school suspended on an inherently weird little tourist island that is even weirder and more bleak during this closed-down and inclement period of the calendar, when even the loyal vagrants who’ve summered on its streets for a decade have peaced out for the time being. In this reedy and rickety, wind-scoured and shuttered setting, the narrator’s sense of self-sabotage or lack of insight or both compel her to teach a most discordant course that she labels The Literature of the City and whose syllabus was written in the space of twenty minutes and consists solely of reading Charles Dickens’s Bleak House for the entire school year — a decision that is received just as enthusiastically as you’d expect by the small and motley crew of junior high school girls rendered into her care.
This book, as many reviews will doubtless say, is NOT for everyone. But, I found it absolutely hilarious, every line. Sure, the comedy is extremely dark and disturbing, soaring to new heights of unreliable narration and, as our narrator is increasingly lost in the swirling smoggy funk of her own imaginations, fueled as they are by “Methamphetamine’s Cousin,” becoming super cringey to an almost unbearable pain point. Yet, there is that steady if bleakest humor to get you through, and some very faint traces of relatability, empathy, and even hope surface as we watch to see if she will be able to emerge into the rustlings of a more fruitful and bustling new season.
I really did love this one and feel grateful and vindicated that it has also been praised by writers as different and respected as Catherine Lacey, Michael Chabon, Elizabeth McCracken, and Jessica Anthony. A very unique and funny read that I hope does not get thoughtlessly lumped into the lazy categorization of Sad Girl Lit and whose unusual humor I hope does not go undetected. A beach read for recovering failed would-be academics everywhere! My thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Astra Publishing House for the ARC of Offseason, due out on May 5, 2026.
(I’ve promised myself to stop referencing both Ducks, Newburyport and Ottessa Moshfegh in my reviews, but this won’t be the time.)
But to quote Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation: “Education is directly proportional to anxiety,” and indeed, Offseason, which I would label as Interior Dark (Comedic) Academia, may best be appreciated by readers like myself who have spent some time in grad school, whether successfully or not, particularly for literature or philosophy, but anywhere in the liberal arts and humanities realm, and belatedly or not so belatedly realized that this was likely the worst environment in the world for them, like total raging Inner Demons Fuel. As my first high school boyfriend told me when he broke up with me, in a remark that was devastating at the time but likely prescient, “You think too much.”
The unnamed narrator of Offseason certainly thinks too much, mostly delusionally by this point, as she ships herself off to self-imposed exile on an eastern US seaboard island to teach at a mid-level girls’ boarding school, like Jane Eyre’s cousin with a bad Eeyore complex. Instead of fleeing Lowood, but for some similar reasons, she is fleeing her Chicago family home, where she has recently crash-landed post-crisis after having sworn that ever to do so would constitute a fate worse than death. Unlike Jane, the narrator is not an orphan, although she seems to believe she may as well be, but rather is the daughter of a Russian-speaking Jewish mother, who immigrated from Soviet Lithuania and is prone to rapid emotional vicissitudes, and a father who is sort of on Mildly Anxious Hovering Management Standby Mode. (And a sister who is an MMA fighter.) There is also a mysterious ex who seems to be her most secure tether to reality and hope, as evidenced by his ability to have remained in the grad program from which she has, with equal mystery, ejected.
“Offseason” is such an appropriate title for this narrative, because during this lost, shut-down period of her life, our narrator spends a weird two semesters in stasis at this weird little old school suspended on an inherently weird little tourist island that is even weirder and more bleak during this closed-down and inclement period of the calendar, when even the loyal vagrants who’ve summered on its streets for a decade have peaced out for the time being. In this reedy and rickety, wind-scoured and shuttered setting, the narrator’s sense of self-sabotage or lack of insight or both compel her to teach a most discordant course that she labels The Literature of the City and whose syllabus was written in the space of twenty minutes and consists solely of reading Charles Dickens’s Bleak House for the entire school year — a decision that is received just as enthusiastically as you’d expect by the small and motley crew of junior high school girls rendered into her care.
This book, as many reviews will doubtless say, is NOT for everyone. But, I found it absolutely hilarious, every line. Sure, the comedy is extremely dark and disturbing, soaring to new heights of unreliable narration and, as our narrator is increasingly lost in the swirling smoggy funk of her own imaginations, fueled as they are by “Methamphetamine’s Cousin,” becoming super cringey to an almost unbearable pain point. Yet, there is that steady if bleakest humor to get you through, and some very faint traces of relatability, empathy, and even hope surface as we watch to see if she will be able to emerge into the rustlings of a more fruitful and bustling new season.
I really did love this one and feel grateful and vindicated that it has also been praised by writers as different and respected as Catherine Lacey, Michael Chabon, Elizabeth McCracken, and Jessica Anthony. A very unique and funny read that I hope does not get thoughtlessly lumped into the lazy categorization of Sad Girl Lit and whose unusual humor I hope does not go undetected. A beach read for recovering failed would-be academics everywhere! My thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Astra Publishing House for the ARC of Offseason, due out on May 5, 2026.
December 9, 2025
Offseason is one of those rare novels that grabs you instantly and doesn’t let go. I flew through it. Not just because the writing is sharp and propulsive, but because the protagonist is so bizarrely, brilliantly herself.
The story follows a young woman who moves to a small town on the Eastern Seaboard for a short-term teaching job at a private academy. Instead of the fresh start she imagines, the isolation and strangeness of the off-season campus push her deeper into her own obsessive inner world. She fixates on the Holocaust, her family’s knot of trans-generational trauma, Stalin, pedophiles - dark, thorny subjects that in another novel might weigh things down. Here, they become part of a voice so incisive and unexpectedly funny that I found myself laughing out loud at moments that should, by all logic, be grim.
What I loved most is how the book balances emotional discomfort with wicked humor. Her intellectual rabbit holes don’t feel like quirks for color, they’re the exact machinery through which she tries (and often fails) to make sense of her own anxiety, history, and desire. It’s unsettling, illuminating, and deeply human.
The pacing is electric, the voice unforgettable, and the blend of seriousness and comedy is pulled off with a precision that feels effortless. I finished it wishing I could read it again for the first time.
If you like fiction that’s strange, smart, unflinching, and genuinely funny, Offseason is a knockout.
5⭐️
Thanks to NetGalley and Astra House for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
The story follows a young woman who moves to a small town on the Eastern Seaboard for a short-term teaching job at a private academy. Instead of the fresh start she imagines, the isolation and strangeness of the off-season campus push her deeper into her own obsessive inner world. She fixates on the Holocaust, her family’s knot of trans-generational trauma, Stalin, pedophiles - dark, thorny subjects that in another novel might weigh things down. Here, they become part of a voice so incisive and unexpectedly funny that I found myself laughing out loud at moments that should, by all logic, be grim.
What I loved most is how the book balances emotional discomfort with wicked humor. Her intellectual rabbit holes don’t feel like quirks for color, they’re the exact machinery through which she tries (and often fails) to make sense of her own anxiety, history, and desire. It’s unsettling, illuminating, and deeply human.
The pacing is electric, the voice unforgettable, and the blend of seriousness and comedy is pulled off with a precision that feels effortless. I finished it wishing I could read it again for the first time.
If you like fiction that’s strange, smart, unflinching, and genuinely funny, Offseason is a knockout.
5⭐️
Thanks to NetGalley and Astra House for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
If this story were a texture, it would be sticky to the touch and you'd wonder if the residue was candy or vomit.
As the name "Offseason" suggests, the novel takes place in a kind of in-between state, a bridge between what has happened and what is going to happen for our main character. The FMC is a bizarre woman who is fully herself, and in the novel we explore what she believes has 'violated her, brought her down, and ruined her life'. The story has observant meanderings about life, generational trauma, rape, ephebophilia, and 'Hot' Stalin, while also being disgusting (which I mean in the most complimentary way).
I heavily annotated my e-copy, and could easily see myself revisting this story again in the future for both laughs and meaningful insights on life. Thank you NetGalley and Astra House for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!
As the name "Offseason" suggests, the novel takes place in a kind of in-between state, a bridge between what has happened and what is going to happen for our main character. The FMC is a bizarre woman who is fully herself, and in the novel we explore what she believes has 'violated her, brought her down, and ruined her life'. The story has observant meanderings about life, generational trauma, rape, ephebophilia, and 'Hot' Stalin, while also being disgusting (which I mean in the most complimentary way).
I heavily annotated my e-copy, and could easily see myself revisting this story again in the future for both laughs and meaningful insights on life. Thank you NetGalley and Astra House for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!
May 4, 2026
2.5
this started out good but i very quickly lost interest
this started out good but i very quickly lost interest
March 22, 2026
If what appeals to you about this book is a story about a woman finding herself through the eyes of her students while teaching at a girls’ school, I would suggest a reread of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie instead. Don’t come for the plot, come for the vibes (the vibes being Fleabag meets early Moshfegh).
This book is being compared to The Idiot for good reason, which is that the narrator fully immerses you in her point of view, at its gnarliest, most tangential, and most irreverent. Personally, I love this kind of POV, but I know it’s not for everyone.
Bonus points for an unhealthy sexualized obsession with a problematic (and dead) historical figure (if you enjoyed the Freud obsession in Jessica Gross’s Hysteria, you’ll go crazy for the Stalin obsession in Offseason).
Negative points for really laying on thick (and often!) the difference between pedophiles and ephebophiles, which while semantically correct, makes my stomach churn (a year ago I might not have been so nauseous about this distinction—thanks, Megyn Kelly and every bro podcaster for this).
Thank you to NetGalley & Astra House for the arc!
This book is being compared to The Idiot for good reason, which is that the narrator fully immerses you in her point of view, at its gnarliest, most tangential, and most irreverent. Personally, I love this kind of POV, but I know it’s not for everyone.
Bonus points for an unhealthy sexualized obsession with a problematic (and dead) historical figure (if you enjoyed the Freud obsession in Jessica Gross’s Hysteria, you’ll go crazy for the Stalin obsession in Offseason).
Negative points for really laying on thick (and often!) the difference between pedophiles and ephebophiles, which while semantically correct, makes my stomach churn (a year ago I might not have been so nauseous about this distinction—thanks, Megyn Kelly and every bro podcaster for this).
Thank you to NetGalley & Astra House for the arc!
November 15, 2025
Thanks to Netgalley and Astra House for the ebook. We follow a young woman who gets a last minute gig to teach at an all girls school in New England. In a time where you would never make students read a long novel, she assigns Dicken’s nearly thousand page Bleak House (one student later asks her, Can’t you tell we’re just pretending to have read it?). And then while teaching she constantly talks about pedophiles, the miserable upbringing of Stalin, who is a favorite of hers, and her family’s personal history of the Holocaust. She’s such a fascinating character. She seems to enjoy talking to one of the town’s transients, who never remembers her later, than anyone else. She thinks the teacher she’s replacing for the year may have had an inappropriate relationship with one of the students and then starts an affair with him. She swears she’ll never go home again and then goes home Christmas break and goes out to a bar and starts making out with a childhood acquaintance who she says abused her and ruined her life. It’s not always clear what to believe, but it’s amazing to be in her head as she’s constantly full of praise and apologies to everyone she meets, but so blisteringly mean and inappropriate in her thoughts.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
This book was All Fours by Miranda July meets The Coin by Yasmin Zaher, perfect for lovers of girl-messes in literature. I really enjoyed this book. It's one that you really have to give your full attention to in order to fully sink into the prose, brilliantly written by Avigayl Sharp. The novel is very humorous in a way where you're not entirely sure if you should be laughing, but the ridiculousness of everything out of the FMC's mouth had me chuckling out loud several times. I especially think Sharp excels at writing when her characters are telling anecdotes to each other- these stories within the main narrative structure are insane and take so many strange turns. I would definitely recommend this to lovers of weird women in fiction.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
April 16, 2026
Yes. This book was made for me. I love my girlies unhinged and uncomfy. Thank you Astra House for my early copy!
February 27, 2026
Thank you to NetGalley, Astra Publishing House, and Avigayle Sharp for my very first ARC!
I loved this book. It won’t be for everyone — and that’s fine. It’s one of those “nothing happens” in a dramatic sense, but somehow everything happens, you know? The action is almost entirely internal.
The main character has a somewhat romantic obsession with a young, 'misunderstood' Joseph (I mean Iosif) Stalin. She's worried about her possibly depressed psychiatrist offing himself. She constantly spirals into strange, funny internal monologues about important things and also things that are not. (Who knew people could be so passionate about the different kinds of -philes?)
Hilarious, witty, brilliant. Offseason is entertaining, beautifully written, and deep. Amazing debut! One of my favorites to kick off 2026.
TL;DR - funny, absurd, self-aware, very original. If you like Fleabag you'll love this.
I loved this book. It won’t be for everyone — and that’s fine. It’s one of those “nothing happens” in a dramatic sense, but somehow everything happens, you know? The action is almost entirely internal.
The main character has a somewhat romantic obsession with a young, 'misunderstood' Joseph (I mean Iosif) Stalin. She's worried about her possibly depressed psychiatrist offing himself. She constantly spirals into strange, funny internal monologues about important things and also things that are not. (Who knew people could be so passionate about the different kinds of -philes?)
Hilarious, witty, brilliant. Offseason is entertaining, beautifully written, and deep. Amazing debut! One of my favorites to kick off 2026.
TL;DR - funny, absurd, self-aware, very original. If you like Fleabag you'll love this.
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January 23, 2026Everyone is raving... I fear I am too easily influenced
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February 16, 2026
The Fiona DG Story
April 13, 2026
I don't think I will ever tire of the weird girl genre. It always brings something unexpected, uncomfortable, and a little unnerving, which are three of my favorite things to experience when I'm reading. Offseason is the perfect example of all of the above.
Although it was not a plot driven book, and not necessarily a character study either, I was never bored. In fact, it was the opposite. I felt drawn to this weird tale of our protagonist's journey through a school year and her one-of-a-kind interactions with those in her purview. Avigayl Sharp's distinctive writing style was so enchanting and strange that it was hard to look away.
I'd recommend Offseason to all the weirdos out there looking for full of an absorbing oddity that will stick with you long after its over.
Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House for an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.
Although it was not a plot driven book, and not necessarily a character study either, I was never bored. In fact, it was the opposite. I felt drawn to this weird tale of our protagonist's journey through a school year and her one-of-a-kind interactions with those in her purview. Avigayl Sharp's distinctive writing style was so enchanting and strange that it was hard to look away.
I'd recommend Offseason to all the weirdos out there looking for full of an absorbing oddity that will stick with you long after its over.
Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House for an Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A ballsy and exceptional debut, in which 'debut' clearly does not mean junior in any way. Phenomenal writing, daring and confident; beautiful prose painting a vivid picture of a chaotic time spent in limbo.
I am not embarrassed to admit what I don't know, and there are many things still that I know of by name exclusively. Yes, Freud, weird sexual ideas about parents, but that's as far as I got before reading Offseason. So I'm having a great time with novels like this, that inspire me to look into all the works they appear to be referencing. And with Offseason, there are plenty.
Let me start by saying if you seek a clear plot, you will not find it here. If you enjoy being provoked and thrown around so you can come back and pick things apart later, this will serve you well. With a work like this I enjoy emptying entire highlighters on its pages, scribbling a million "-?"s in its margins, and unleashing a troop of tabs to take post all over it. A cartography of confusion that might suddenly reveal a key to reading everything, a quest I felt the text definitely rewarded me for.
In Offseason, our main character uses everything in her power - and everyone that crosses her path - to explain why her life was ruined, and she along with it. From projection through her students to wielding Freud's controversial theory of psychosexual development as both sword and shield, her narration is as incisively observant as it is completely deluded and detached from reality. Every next person she meets is assessed for their potential to progress her goal, in a string of bizarre social encounters and fever-dream scenarios where she consistently overshares, projects, misreads and obsesses over her poor misunderstood baby Iosif Stalin.
It all culminates in a monologue - interrupted, apparently having been given before the exact same way to the exact same person - that clarified what I'd been picking up and threw another wrench into my plans to come away with some conviction about what really happened. That almost robotic repetition found in several places, of unnatural sounding phrases and descriptions like 'sexually frigid, incapable of orgasm-with-partner' ended up having the interesting effect of quantifying the presence and space taken up by trauma carried around, and how messy and weird it makes us look.
Icky, unnerving, darkly hilarious and remarkably well written, perhaps not for everyone, but thankfully it found its way to me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
⚠️‼️ Content warning:
Several graphic descriptions of disordered eating behavior, including graphic descriptions of vomiting, and many mentions of sexual assault and child predators. Though I must say - and I don't know how to say this without sounding wrong - I am very sensitive about both vomiting and SA, and I didn't find the mentions of these subjects in the book 'heavy' or emotionally draining. Rape is yapped about relentlessly, as are pedophilia and ephebophilia, and I find that very important to disclose but must also add that they are mostly discussed as concepts, not detailed in sickening scenes.
I am not embarrassed to admit what I don't know, and there are many things still that I know of by name exclusively. Yes, Freud, weird sexual ideas about parents, but that's as far as I got before reading Offseason. So I'm having a great time with novels like this, that inspire me to look into all the works they appear to be referencing. And with Offseason, there are plenty.
Let me start by saying if you seek a clear plot, you will not find it here. If you enjoy being provoked and thrown around so you can come back and pick things apart later, this will serve you well. With a work like this I enjoy emptying entire highlighters on its pages, scribbling a million "-?"s in its margins, and unleashing a troop of tabs to take post all over it. A cartography of confusion that might suddenly reveal a key to reading everything, a quest I felt the text definitely rewarded me for.
In Offseason, our main character uses everything in her power - and everyone that crosses her path - to explain why her life was ruined, and she along with it. From projection through her students to wielding Freud's controversial theory of psychosexual development as both sword and shield, her narration is as incisively observant as it is completely deluded and detached from reality. Every next person she meets is assessed for their potential to progress her goal, in a string of bizarre social encounters and fever-dream scenarios where she consistently overshares, projects, misreads and obsesses over her poor misunderstood baby Iosif Stalin.
It all culminates in a monologue - interrupted, apparently having been given before the exact same way to the exact same person - that clarified what I'd been picking up and threw another wrench into my plans to come away with some conviction about what really happened. That almost robotic repetition found in several places, of unnatural sounding phrases and descriptions like 'sexually frigid, incapable of orgasm-with-partner' ended up having the interesting effect of quantifying the presence and space taken up by trauma carried around, and how messy and weird it makes us look.
Icky, unnerving, darkly hilarious and remarkably well written, perhaps not for everyone, but thankfully it found its way to me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
... the sun came up over virtuosic fields of subsidized corn, obese cows, miserable horses, so called rivers - green, rank, oily with pollution. My seat smelled strongly of old coffee and hard-boiled eggs.
This is an absolute tour de force in terms of writing: Sharp's prose is capricious and erratic as we are in the head of a wayward intelligence, consumed with its own inability to escape itself. Review after review I've read talks about how 'hilarious' this is but, for me, it's only so in a black and very vulnerable way that made me anxious and jittery. Our protagonist through whose consciousness we filter everything, is both troubled and medicated, clinging on by the very edges of her fingernails to some kind of 'normality' as she takes up a gig teaching literature in a girls school. That the only book she can focus on is Dickens' Bleak House is no coincidence; and more clues about how she has ended up in this hyperactive and displaced state come from her obsessions: Iosef Stalin, the Holocaust, paedophilia, her family, a recent break-up, her failed time at grad school...
It is absolutely to the author's credit how such a deranged voice is articulated with such control and ability to connect to us. The 'craziness' came over less funny to me than tragic and a bit pathetic - this is another one of those characters where I wanted to reach into the book and give her a big hug, however much she would likely have bridled and pushed away any such physical and emotional encroachment.
Powerful writing, for sure, but for me, the novel isn't perhaps the best form for this narrative: without movement, this would probably have worked better for me in short form. But phenomenal prose, and a genuinely interesting piece of writing that I'm not sure I'd compare to anything else out there at the moment.
3.5 stars rounded up to 4 for the phenomenal writing.
Many thanks to Orion for an ARC via NetGalley
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Offseason by Avigayl Sharp is a funny, surprising, and woozy exploration of the difficulties of connecting, and the generational impact of trauma.
Our unnamed narrator is spending the fall and spring semesters teaching English literature at an all-girls boarding school on the eastern seaboard of the United States. It’s a temporary post, due to the mysterious absence of the regular teacher. We immediately understand that her relationship with the world is shaded by questionable impulses and obsessions, her lenses denying her the ability to focus clearly on things, either giving them no thought or too much.
She has a particular obsession with men—male teachers especially—who have a sexual interest in children or teens, and several times she alludes, elliptically, to two separate experiences of her own which have clearly had a destabilising impact. It becomes apparent, through her narration, that her distorted sense of self predates these experiences by many years, but may also have increased her vulnerability to them.
Her classroom sessions are darkly funny—her brisk and ineffective methods focus only on Dickens’ Bleak House, and she rhapsodises about a young, “hot” Stalin at every (imagined) opportunity—and reveal, heartbreakingly, both her distance from and similarity to the troubled teens she teaches.
She seems, in fact, to begin every interaction with her arm in the wrong sleeve of it, struggling to reshape it into something she can use.
Sharp does an exceptional job of allowing us to witness the narrator’s struggles with her mind and body, her thought processes rendered through unusual similes, rich visual cues, and abrupt tonal shifts.
There are many threads here, some informing each other, some expanding or contracting without resolving, but all of them deepening our understanding of our narrator and her off-kilter sense of the world. As often as she misreads a situation, she skewers another with a fresh perspective worth celebrating. It’s a remarkably effective portrayal of character, and makes for a truly invigorating read.
Our unnamed narrator is spending the fall and spring semesters teaching English literature at an all-girls boarding school on the eastern seaboard of the United States. It’s a temporary post, due to the mysterious absence of the regular teacher. We immediately understand that her relationship with the world is shaded by questionable impulses and obsessions, her lenses denying her the ability to focus clearly on things, either giving them no thought or too much.
She has a particular obsession with men—male teachers especially—who have a sexual interest in children or teens, and several times she alludes, elliptically, to two separate experiences of her own which have clearly had a destabilising impact. It becomes apparent, through her narration, that her distorted sense of self predates these experiences by many years, but may also have increased her vulnerability to them.
Her classroom sessions are darkly funny—her brisk and ineffective methods focus only on Dickens’ Bleak House, and she rhapsodises about a young, “hot” Stalin at every (imagined) opportunity—and reveal, heartbreakingly, both her distance from and similarity to the troubled teens she teaches.
She seems, in fact, to begin every interaction with her arm in the wrong sleeve of it, struggling to reshape it into something she can use.
Sharp does an exceptional job of allowing us to witness the narrator’s struggles with her mind and body, her thought processes rendered through unusual similes, rich visual cues, and abrupt tonal shifts.
There are many threads here, some informing each other, some expanding or contracting without resolving, but all of them deepening our understanding of our narrator and her off-kilter sense of the world. As often as she misreads a situation, she skewers another with a fresh perspective worth celebrating. It’s a remarkably effective portrayal of character, and makes for a truly invigorating read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Debut, dark, literary, psychological, obsessive, difficult - these are words that come to mind after experiencing OFFSEASON, by Avigayl Sharp.
As an author, Avigayl Sharp has published short form fiction with limited acknowledgement. OFFSEASON is her first foray into full length stories; perhaps not the best vehicle for the limited storyline. Hallmarks of good, full length fiction include elements like: character development, conflict, resolution, a plot to follow, readable pacing and discoverable themes. Most of these are lacking, unfortunately.
As a main character, the story is blithered by an unnamed, drug addled, young teacher beginning a new semester at a girls, high school Academy located in a small, underfunded, coastal New England hamlet. She is preoccupied with Iosif, (Joseph), Stalin, sex, Bleak House, “methamphetamine’s cousin” and her mother - past, present, future. I shudder to think of this person potentially teaching my daughter.
Altho’ there are some well written, erudite passages, the story reads like a ping ponging, stream of consciousness on an overdose of Adderall, “meth’s cousin”. It’s further complicated by not using quotation marks around the limited dialogue. These combined to make for a difficult read.
I failed to find humor on the pages. Followable plot points, themes and character development or advancement are also difficult to identify. Because the narrator is affected by behavior altering chemicals, so is the story. It’s a pointless journey that goes on and on for 285 pages.
At the conclusion of a book, I expect to have learned something, feel something or look forward to something new from the author. This story provided nothing other than sadness and wanting to get the narrator a good therapist📚
I received a copy for review purposes. All opinions are honest and mine alone.
Read & Reviewed from a NetGalley eARC via Kindle with thanks to the publisher and author.
As an author, Avigayl Sharp has published short form fiction with limited acknowledgement. OFFSEASON is her first foray into full length stories; perhaps not the best vehicle for the limited storyline. Hallmarks of good, full length fiction include elements like: character development, conflict, resolution, a plot to follow, readable pacing and discoverable themes. Most of these are lacking, unfortunately.
As a main character, the story is blithered by an unnamed, drug addled, young teacher beginning a new semester at a girls, high school Academy located in a small, underfunded, coastal New England hamlet. She is preoccupied with Iosif, (Joseph), Stalin, sex, Bleak House, “methamphetamine’s cousin” and her mother - past, present, future. I shudder to think of this person potentially teaching my daughter.
Altho’ there are some well written, erudite passages, the story reads like a ping ponging, stream of consciousness on an overdose of Adderall, “meth’s cousin”. It’s further complicated by not using quotation marks around the limited dialogue. These combined to make for a difficult read.
I failed to find humor on the pages. Followable plot points, themes and character development or advancement are also difficult to identify. Because the narrator is affected by behavior altering chemicals, so is the story. It’s a pointless journey that goes on and on for 285 pages.
At the conclusion of a book, I expect to have learned something, feel something or look forward to something new from the author. This story provided nothing other than sadness and wanting to get the narrator a good therapist📚
I received a copy for review purposes. All opinions are honest and mine alone.
Read & Reviewed from a NetGalley eARC via Kindle with thanks to the publisher and author.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I went into Offseason expecting dark wit and sharp insight. What I got was 300+ pages trapped inside the head of one of the most insufferable narrators I’ve read in a while.
The premise had promise: a woman takes a teaching job at an all-girls boarding school while unraveling her past. But any momentum the story might have had is buried under an avalanche of self-important, awkward, and relentlessly self-referential inner monologue. We never get a break from her “observations,” which say far more about her limitations than about the world around her.
She has textbook main character syndrome. Every interaction bends back toward her. Every event becomes proof of her own depth, trauma, or intellectual superiority. Her references and philosophical tangents feel less like insight and more like someone trying very hard to sound profound. Instead of layered commentary, we get circular navel-gazing.
The tone seems to aim for dark comedy, but the humor never lands. Scenes that feel designed to be biting or absurd come across as flat and uncomfortable. Instead of sharp satire, it reads as self-pity dressed up as wit. What was supposed to be funny just felt sad. Not devastating in a purposeful way. Just small, claustrophobic, and emotionally stagnant.
What frustrated me most is how narrow her worldview is. She has limited experience, which is fine in itself, but she has turned that limitation into a rigid, self-affirming worldview. There’s no curiosity, no real expansion, no genuine reckoning. Just repetition. The same emotional beats. The same self-mythologizing. Over and over.
A biting, self-aware narrator can be electric. This one is exhausting. By the end, I didn’t dislike the plot so much as I resented the constant confinement inside her head.
There’s probably a reader who will find this voice razor sharp and daring. I mostly found it grating.
The premise had promise: a woman takes a teaching job at an all-girls boarding school while unraveling her past. But any momentum the story might have had is buried under an avalanche of self-important, awkward, and relentlessly self-referential inner monologue. We never get a break from her “observations,” which say far more about her limitations than about the world around her.
She has textbook main character syndrome. Every interaction bends back toward her. Every event becomes proof of her own depth, trauma, or intellectual superiority. Her references and philosophical tangents feel less like insight and more like someone trying very hard to sound profound. Instead of layered commentary, we get circular navel-gazing.
The tone seems to aim for dark comedy, but the humor never lands. Scenes that feel designed to be biting or absurd come across as flat and uncomfortable. Instead of sharp satire, it reads as self-pity dressed up as wit. What was supposed to be funny just felt sad. Not devastating in a purposeful way. Just small, claustrophobic, and emotionally stagnant.
What frustrated me most is how narrow her worldview is. She has limited experience, which is fine in itself, but she has turned that limitation into a rigid, self-affirming worldview. There’s no curiosity, no real expansion, no genuine reckoning. Just repetition. The same emotional beats. The same self-mythologizing. Over and over.
A biting, self-aware narrator can be electric. This one is exhausting. By the end, I didn’t dislike the plot so much as I resented the constant confinement inside her head.
There’s probably a reader who will find this voice razor sharp and daring. I mostly found it grating.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Offseason, aptly named for its narrative taking place during a tourist town’s offseason, is about our narrator and main character, a grating and self concerned young woman, who has recently moved out of her parents house to take a job teaching at an all-girls boarding school in the east of The United States, in an isolated small town near the sea. Our protagonist is quite overtly unlikable but in an intriguing sense, similar to the main characters of novels like “Pizza Girl” or the soon to be released “Just Watch Me”; She is forceful with her hyperfixations, weirdly forward with her own lore, and really just gets through her life and her job in increasingly impulsive and unpredictable ways on her journey to come to terms with herself and her own history. I found the writing to be very promising for a debut novel, lots of collectible clever lines, a meandering but not dragging narrative, and enough sudden unsettling inserts to keep things interesting, albeit a little nasty. The ARC copy I read definitely had a lot of formatting issues (missing spaces, dashes, unneeded step downs), but otherwise felt balanced in chapter length and pace. Our protagonist’s unorthodox interests and hyperfixations, though often coming across as overly quirky, at other times, primarily in her obsession with the novel “Bleak House”, were an interesting tool to explore our characters own cognition of her pock-holed memory and trauma. Overall, despite its tendency to often fall into the literary ditch of “overtly unlikable women” so topical these days (common in Moshfegh, Awad, and Broder, etc.), I found this novel to be a promising debut that I think a lot of literary fiction fans, especially women who read primarily litfic, will eat up for sure and find decently poignant.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Hahaha! Where do I even begin. Maybe the style. This is the kind of book where there are no quotation marks for dialogue and it's all in a sort-of stream of consciousness, so a character's ramble can go on and on for paragraphs and you get the sense of a seamless experience between the external happenings and the narrator's internal thoughts. Which are, just so you know, utterly deranged. It could be her medication but honestly I think it's just her personality. Every time I think she's hit peak insanity, I am proven wrong in the next chapter. I can't even ask what's wrong with her because she tells you. In fact, she tells everybody, spills out her life story to them over and over, but to her therapist, she lies and places herself in the role of *his* therapist keeping his depression at bay.
The narrator takes a job at an all-girls boarding school along the coast, away from the city where she was born and raised by her eccentric family. She's teaching literature to students, but instead of having a normal syllabus, she makes everybody read 'Bleak House' using a syllabus she pulls out of her ass, teaching in a way that disregards the actual level of the students or their general disinterest in Stalin. She is obsessed with Stalin and the concept of the unattainable "orgasm-with-partner". She hooks up with the teacher she replaced and becomes fixated on a theory that he had an inappropriate relationship with one of the students, although there's no proof, all the while she the one having a fling with him. I lost count of how many times I went, "haha what??" when reading this. This is a weird but endearing read.
The narrator takes a job at an all-girls boarding school along the coast, away from the city where she was born and raised by her eccentric family. She's teaching literature to students, but instead of having a normal syllabus, she makes everybody read 'Bleak House' using a syllabus she pulls out of her ass, teaching in a way that disregards the actual level of the students or their general disinterest in Stalin. She is obsessed with Stalin and the concept of the unattainable "orgasm-with-partner". She hooks up with the teacher she replaced and becomes fixated on a theory that he had an inappropriate relationship with one of the students, although there's no proof, all the while she the one having a fling with him. I lost count of how many times I went, "haha what??" when reading this. This is a weird but endearing read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you Avigayl Sharp, Astra Publishing House and NetGalley for granting me access to this eARC and for the opportunity to read and review this title!
With dark humor and offbeat tangents, Avigayl Sharp’s debut novel is a smart character study that explores the impact of trauma and how it morphs and manifests in complex — and exceedingly worrying ways — for an English literature teacher over the course of one school year during a coastal town’s offseason.
Offseason is described as deranged, which it is, but it is much more subtle than a Mona Awad or Ottessa Moshfegh novel would be. It took me a little while to get through it simply because the subject matter felt very heavy at times, but it was an overall interesting reading experience. One scene was so chaotic that I felt like I was watching the “Fishes” episode in season two of The Bear again. I laughed many times but squirmed at others, particularly when sensitive topics like sexual assault were being discussed in a flippant manner.
Typically it is a pet peeve of mine when authors choose to omit quotation marks when writing dialogue, but it fit for this novel. Without a name for the narrator, and with brusque descriptions for the other characters, this style further intensified the narrator’s isolation and heightened the reading experience as a whole.
That said, if you are interested in unconventional punctuation, unreliable narrators, intergenerational trauma and learning a thing or two about Stalin, then this book is for you.
With dark humor and offbeat tangents, Avigayl Sharp’s debut novel is a smart character study that explores the impact of trauma and how it morphs and manifests in complex — and exceedingly worrying ways — for an English literature teacher over the course of one school year during a coastal town’s offseason.
Offseason is described as deranged, which it is, but it is much more subtle than a Mona Awad or Ottessa Moshfegh novel would be. It took me a little while to get through it simply because the subject matter felt very heavy at times, but it was an overall interesting reading experience. One scene was so chaotic that I felt like I was watching the “Fishes” episode in season two of The Bear again. I laughed many times but squirmed at others, particularly when sensitive topics like sexual assault were being discussed in a flippant manner.
Typically it is a pet peeve of mine when authors choose to omit quotation marks when writing dialogue, but it fit for this novel. Without a name for the narrator, and with brusque descriptions for the other characters, this style further intensified the narrator’s isolation and heightened the reading experience as a whole.
That said, if you are interested in unconventional punctuation, unreliable narrators, intergenerational trauma and learning a thing or two about Stalin, then this book is for you.
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January 23, 2026*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.*
Offseason follows a woman as she teaches at an all-girls boarding school. She teaches her students about Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and talks to the town’s locals. Her family history was shaped by the Holocaust and she frequently ruminates about Iosif (Joseph) Stalin. She goes back to her hometown where she encounters someone who may have violated her when she was an adolescent. Her mind spirals when the past collides with the present and closure is nowhere to be found.
This was okay, it had a strong start but then I did start to lose interest. The writing was a little stilted but this was different from all the other lit fic novels like this due to the characters background. Honestly, I don’t think this will be very memorable but I would still recommend this. The writing reminded me of the book The Coin by Yasmin Zaher.
This is an example of the writing - I had told him that my mother used too much soap on my vagina when I was a child with no concern for the delicacy of my vaginal pH, that my mother’s and sister’s beauty had been difficult for me to bear, that I had not been breast fed, that I could not remember ever having witnessed a primal scene but did recall once walking into the bathroom and encountering my mother’s mountainous pubic hair corkscrewing over the toilet, which stimulated and frightened me.
Offseason follows a woman as she teaches at an all-girls boarding school. She teaches her students about Charles Dickens’s Bleak House and talks to the town’s locals. Her family history was shaped by the Holocaust and she frequently ruminates about Iosif (Joseph) Stalin. She goes back to her hometown where she encounters someone who may have violated her when she was an adolescent. Her mind spirals when the past collides with the present and closure is nowhere to be found.
This was okay, it had a strong start but then I did start to lose interest. The writing was a little stilted but this was different from all the other lit fic novels like this due to the characters background. Honestly, I don’t think this will be very memorable but I would still recommend this. The writing reminded me of the book The Coin by Yasmin Zaher.
This is an example of the writing - I had told him that my mother used too much soap on my vagina when I was a child with no concern for the delicacy of my vaginal pH, that my mother’s and sister’s beauty had been difficult for me to bear, that I had not been breast fed, that I could not remember ever having witnessed a primal scene but did recall once walking into the bathroom and encountering my mother’s mountainous pubic hair corkscrewing over the toilet, which stimulated and frightened me.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
This was brilliant. I love when main characters make strange observations or reveal their truest, weirdest selves to us as readers. It feels as if we’re inhabiting them for a while, experiencing every odd thought and uncomfortable feeling right alongside them. The MC is written almost like an otherworldly being, much like the characters in Yorgos Lanthimos’s films, who behave as if they’re otherworldly themselves, trying to blend into human life. Offseason is a hilarious and introspective debut that reminded me a lot of the works of authors such as Ottessa Moshfegh, Halle Butler and Melissa Broder, especially in the way the characters evolve and deliver their inner monologues. There’s a similar sense of grossness, taboo thoughts, and unfiltered behaviour. It’s awkwardly funny, almost absurdist. Offseason was delightfully unhinged, yet dreamy and thoughtful at the same time. I wholeheartedly enjoyed this and inhaled it in two sittings! I look forward to read more from Avigayl Sharp In the future.
Thanks so much to Astra House for providing my review copy in exchange for an honest review. This is definitely up there in my all-time favourite reads of 2025.
Thanks so much to Astra House for providing my review copy in exchange for an honest review. This is definitely up there in my all-time favourite reads of 2025.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Offseason is Avigayl Sharp’s debut novel, and going in, I was genuinely excited. I love discovering new voices, and there’s nothing better than seeing what a debut author brings to the table. The premise itself is intriguing and a little offbeat, and you can immediately tell Sharp knows how to craft a sentence. Her writing is bold, distinctive, and very voice-driven.
That said, even though I appreciated how well written the book is, the narrative style just didn’t appeal to me in the way I hoped it would. Sharp leans into a tone and rhythm that’s unique, but it wasn’t quite the kind of storytelling that fully connects with my preferences. I kept waiting for that moment where everything would click emotionally, but it never totally did.
And because I genuinely love reading debut novels, I was a little disheartened that this one didn’t hit me the way I wanted it to. There’s clearly talent here, and I can see why readers who enjoy more unconventional, voice-driven narratives might really connect with it, but for me, it just didn’t land as strongly as I’d hoped.
Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
That said, even though I appreciated how well written the book is, the narrative style just didn’t appeal to me in the way I hoped it would. Sharp leans into a tone and rhythm that’s unique, but it wasn’t quite the kind of storytelling that fully connects with my preferences. I kept waiting for that moment where everything would click emotionally, but it never totally did.
And because I genuinely love reading debut novels, I was a little disheartened that this one didn’t hit me the way I wanted it to. There’s clearly talent here, and I can see why readers who enjoy more unconventional, voice-driven narratives might really connect with it, but for me, it just didn’t land as strongly as I’d hoped.
Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Edelweiss+
Synopsis: A blisteringly funny and transcendently deranged debut novel following a young woman who takes a job at an all-girls boarding school in a small coastal town to teach English literature—and to try, desperately, to escape the trap that is herself.
This unique and offbeat story is written masterfully in true literary style filled with dark humor, perverseness, rawness, truth, depth and psychological layers.
The author encapsulates the human experience and human existence of not only the protagonist, who is never named in the book, but also for all humanity. It is the beauty and ugly of life with such a blunt cut. It is a woman searching for value inside a cheap and fabricated world, but she isn't necessarily searching for acceptance.
The protagonist is living in the offseason of an absurd little coastal town and she is strange and quite off putting with a past that is deplorable and a family that is nonsensical and deranged yet she is one in the same with her own screwed up sh$t because we all know we are a product of our environment.
If this was a film it would transfer to art house in its irony, poetry and randomness.
This was excellently written. It was uncomfortable in its exposition of what we are really like and how we really think as a whole, but sometimes we need to get uncomfortable to undo our damage and evolve.
Thank you Edelweiss and Astra House Books for the ARC.
Releases May 5th.
This unique and offbeat story is written masterfully in true literary style filled with dark humor, perverseness, rawness, truth, depth and psychological layers.
The author encapsulates the human experience and human existence of not only the protagonist, who is never named in the book, but also for all humanity. It is the beauty and ugly of life with such a blunt cut. It is a woman searching for value inside a cheap and fabricated world, but she isn't necessarily searching for acceptance.
The protagonist is living in the offseason of an absurd little coastal town and she is strange and quite off putting with a past that is deplorable and a family that is nonsensical and deranged yet she is one in the same with her own screwed up sh$t because we all know we are a product of our environment.
If this was a film it would transfer to art house in its irony, poetry and randomness.
This was excellently written. It was uncomfortable in its exposition of what we are really like and how we really think as a whole, but sometimes we need to get uncomfortable to undo our damage and evolve.
Thank you Edelweiss and Astra House Books for the ARC.
Releases May 5th.
April 18, 2026
for fans of books with unhinged women and peculiar streams of consciousness. this book is weird and fascinating and everything someone could want out of a debut lit fic novel 📖
a young woman takes a job as an english literature professor at a new boarding school and tries to make a life out of a life she very much finds it hard to fit into. she’s on meds and stuck by trauma and revisits past hurts, all with a sense of neutral passivity and an air of acceptance over the most destructive of situations. nothing is “too much” - not for someone who has experienced a wild sense of “normal.”
this book reminded me a lot of “my year of rest and relaxation” by ottessa moshfegh - so anyone who is a fan of her work, I’d highly recommend reading this!!
it’s not for those who seek a plot, but those who seek original and eclectic and traumatic narratives but with a kind of comfort in its portrayal of the natural comings and goings of life.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Offseason slots nicely into the growing cannon of weird women lit - a genre which I adore. I really enjoyed our chaotic narrator and her myraid of obbsessions, as well as her absurd and overbearing family. Some parts of the novel are laugh out loud funny - particaulry scenes where our narrator does her best to show that she will remain polite at all costs.
There were a few occasions where it felt like the thread of the story was getting a bit lost or muddied. This was unfortunate because I think this book could have actually been longer and spent more time on the mundane elements of teaching or navigating the "offseason" beach town setting.
All in all, I really enjoyed this title and hope Sharp writes more in the future. Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!
There were a few occasions where it felt like the thread of the story was getting a bit lost or muddied. This was unfortunate because I think this book could have actually been longer and spent more time on the mundane elements of teaching or navigating the "offseason" beach town setting.
All in all, I really enjoyed this title and hope Sharp writes more in the future. Thank you to NetGalley and Astra House for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC, in exchange for an unbiased review.
This debut novel was an unexpected delight. I read it in two sittings. I would classify it as a satire, bordering on absurdism at times. I smirked and giggled throughout- if you like dark or inappropriate humor, this is the book for you.
The plot (if one can call it a "plot"): A seriously f-ed up woman takes a teaching job at a remote girls' school. She is a terrible teacher. She's also an amphetamine addict. She also has parents who are more messed up than she is. And she has very, very poor judgement. The novel encompasses the school year, spending all the narrative inside the FMC's deeply messed-up mind.
I loved it. I can't wait to see what Sharp writes for her sophomore novel.
This debut novel was an unexpected delight. I read it in two sittings. I would classify it as a satire, bordering on absurdism at times. I smirked and giggled throughout- if you like dark or inappropriate humor, this is the book for you.
The plot (if one can call it a "plot"): A seriously f-ed up woman takes a teaching job at a remote girls' school. She is a terrible teacher. She's also an amphetamine addict. She also has parents who are more messed up than she is. And she has very, very poor judgement. The novel encompasses the school year, spending all the narrative inside the FMC's deeply messed-up mind.
I loved it. I can't wait to see what Sharp writes for her sophomore novel.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
'Offseason' by Avigayl Sharp is definitely one of those more vibes than plot books. Maybe it's a case of unfortunate publishing timing, but it reminds me a lot of 'Lost Lambs' by Madeline Cash with its quirks, hyper-fixations, casual violence, lack of decorum, and focus on girlhood/womanhood. While 'Lost Lambs' has a lightness from being truly absurd and written with a flippant disregard for being "PC," 'Offseason's' absurdity comes from its focus on/treatment of trauma and its aftermath on the psyche with the same flippancy, which makes it a braver book, but unfortunately a heavier, less enjoyable read. 'Offseason' will have its audience, but I'm not quite it.
3 stars. Many thanks to Astra Publishing House for the ARC via NetGalley!
3 stars. Many thanks to Astra Publishing House for the ARC via NetGalley!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
What is "Offseason" aiming for? Seemingly to imitate how Ottessa Moshfegh and co were writing ten years ago. Isn't this style a bit out of fashion now? Maybe not. For my part, I found this book's voice grating rather than electrifying. The manic, hyper-articulate narrator --ricocheting between literary references and personal trauma -- feels too indebted to writers like the aforementioned Moshfegh, and what once might have seemed daring now reads as predictable. The humor is abrasive without being especially fresh, and the relentless irony flattens moments that should land with emotional force. Too performative for me.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
A somewhat inaccessible novel about a frustrating woman teaching for a year at a girls boarding school. The official description describes it as “deranged” but I almost feel it wasn’t deranged enough!
Our unnamed narrator had a chaotic brain and following her trains of thoughts can often be hard, but I did enjoy the humor that shone through her somewhat manic episodes. There isn’t much of a plot, just her dealing with her strange family, sexual politics on campus, and teaching Bleak House to a ton of high school girls who couldn’t care less. It’s definitely a vibe, I just didn’t really vibe with it myself.
Our unnamed narrator had a chaotic brain and following her trains of thoughts can often be hard, but I did enjoy the humor that shone through her somewhat manic episodes. There isn’t much of a plot, just her dealing with her strange family, sexual politics on campus, and teaching Bleak House to a ton of high school girls who couldn’t care less. It’s definitely a vibe, I just didn’t really vibe with it myself.
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