review: death in her hands

ottessa moshfegh dares you to f*ck around and find out.

a novel by ottessa moshfegh. published by penguin random house. i do not own this image!

death in her hands

by ottessa moshfegh

warning: semi-spoilers ahead. ending not spoiled.

for those who have read moshfegh’s latest novel, i am ninety five percent certain you’ll be inclined to agree with me when i say, this book’s not for everyone. i’d argue that death in her hands isn’t even meant for a large portion of moshfegh’s usual readers: fans of eileen and my year of rest and relaxation, folks who eagerly sucked down the stories of these not-quite-sympathetic protagonists the way the narrator in my year sucked down those large bodega coffees. i’m more confident in saying death in her hands is commentary, satire, metafiction - whatever you want to call it - wrapped up in a gorgeous, emotionally painful bow. it’s a story about grief, regret, and loneliness. this story is for writers.

moshfegh opens with a hugely compelling call to action as the protagonist, 76-year-old vesta, discovers a note on her daily walk with her dog, charlie: "her name was magda. nobody will ever know who killed her. it wasn't me. here is her dead body.” only there is no body. there’s just vesta and charlie, all alone in the woods of the impoverished small town, levant. but are they really alone?

we continue to explore levant and the neighboring town of bethsmane through vesta’s eyes as she resolves to unravel this mystery by herself, watching vesta create an entire life for the faceless (and otherwise bodiless) magda, the lovers she holds, the miserable life she endures, and her eventual demise. we meet faces for the cast vesta creates, including a woman and her son, a never-quite-visible lover, and a monstrous evil entity named ghod which takes the form of a police officer. moshfegh leaves us just enough room to question whether vesta is suffering from a downward spiral or if there is something unnervingly afoot going on here. and when the story ends, the mystery - though we could argue over some loose threads - is solved.

moshfegh brilliantly delivers death in her hands to us with a stream of consciousness narrative. vesta is widowed from an unfaithful husband who was diminutive to her throughout their entire marriage, and we learn this in painstaking detail as vesta ruminates on it throughout the novel, during scenes as demanding as when her faithful dog goes missing and as mundane as when Vesta makes a trip to the grocery store. she’s lonely, she’s ailing in health, she’s in unfamiliar land far from the home she made with her husband and even farther away from her childhood home, and she has no one to talk to. so she talks to herself, and, because of moshfegh’s choice of narrative, to us. there is no other way this story could be told effectively, and moshfegh hits it right out of the park.

it’s because of this stream of consciousness that i found myself feeling sorry for vesta: not because of her loneliness, and not even because of her marriage - though i certainly did feel sorry for her because of that - but because i could see every wrong decision she made, her roundabout reasoning, her twisted logic, her lack of purpose in the world she tried so desperately to choose for herself after a lifetime of someone else choosing for her. her purpose hinged on the existence of someone else in her life, and we ironically watched her lose it all, we, the reader, a multitude of folks with listening ears, just out of vesta’s reach. of course vesta has her own problems - she’s fatphobic, and she reacts with seething hatred to anyone who is even slightly rude to her - and it’s because of these problems that moshfegh succeeds with death in her hands. would there have been a story at all if a well-adjusted person had found that note in their backyard?

like i said, this one's not for everybody. but it's as compelling of a read as any of the installments in moshfegh's career, and it's worth the time of anyone who loves some tasty irony. as marie kondo says, "i love mess."

you can find death in her hands in most bookstores - books a million, barnes and noble, amazon - or you can purchase it directly from penguin random house for $16. alternatively, consider outlets like bookshop or indiebound so your purchase supports independently-owned booksellers.