Moshfegh gives the old canard about the association between artistic genius and madness an additional twist to arrive at the notion that inventing complex stories about the intersecting lives of entirely imaginary people is itself a species of madness. It’s the amused contemplation of that void that gives rise to the dark exhilaration of her work-its wayward beauty, its comedy, and its horror. Like a surgeon, or a serial killer, Moshfegh flenses her characters, and her readers, until all that’s left is a void. it’s a haunting meditation on the nature and meaning of art. Moshfegh knows that when human company is swept away, a baroque inner life can often flourish, and Vesta’s increasingly monstrous inner life grows to occlude her view of the world.

Moshfegh has toyed with this technique in much of her work. The unreliable narrator, as a technique, appeals to novelists who are interested in the gaps (tragic, comic) that yawn between how we conceive of ourselves and how the world perceives us to be. But creating this sort of narrative tension isn’t quite what Moshfegh is up to-or, rather, it’s only a fraction of what she's up to.

Vesta’s unreliability is flagged so thoroughly in the early pages that you begin to suspect that Moshfegh is playing some kind of higher-order game with narrative tension. But it makes no real secret of its tricksiness-which is in itself grounds for mistrust. Death in Her Hands is another tricksy novel. Vesta’s speculations are every bit as vivid as Eileen’s. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession: who was Magda and how did she meet her fate?įrom the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen comes this razor-sharp, chilling and darkly hilarious novel about the stories we tell ourselves and how we strive to obscure the truth.Death in Her Hands, Ottessa Moshfegh’s intricate and unsettling new novel, appears at first to occupy familiar territory. Shaky even on her best days, Vesta is also alone, and new to the area, having moved here after the death of her husband. While on her daily walk with her dog in the woods near her home, Vesta comes across a chilling handwritten note. 'This is a story about what might happen when a woman takes charge.

Death in her hands book review