Ottessa Moshfegh is the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a New York Times bestseller; Homesick for Another World, a New York Times Book Review notable book of the year; Eileen, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction; and McGlue, which won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. Her stories have earned her a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Plimpton Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Named a Best Book of 2020 by Elle, Bustle, and the New York Public
Library
“A recent profile of Moshfegh in this newspaper suggested that her
stories of detachment are perfectly suited to this moment of global
isolation. But her goal isn’t to lull us to sleep; it’s to wake us
up. Why aren’t we paying attention? What are we missing? Isn’t it
time for us to start seeing the world as it really is?” —Ruth
Franklin, New York Times Book Review
“[An] intricate and unsettling new novel. . . . Death in Her Hands
is not a murder mystery, nor is it really a story about
self-deception or the perils of escapism. Rather, it’s a haunting
meditation on the nature and meaning of art. . . . Death in Her
Hands is the work of a writer who is, like Henry James or Vladimir
Nabokov, touched by both genius and cruelty. Cruelty, so deplorable
in life, is for novelists a seriously underrated virtue. Like a
surgeon, or a serial killer, Moshfegh flenses her characters, and
her readers, until all that’s left is a void. 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.” —Kevin
Power, The New Yorker
“Moshfegh’s gift for staring down darkness—for finding spiffy
packages for awfulness—is rare and unexpectedly riveting. If art
can’t reclaim maimed pasts, erase pointless ones, or promise better
futures, a writer who keeps us listening to her alienated female
narrators, intrigued by their fates, has managed a feat.” —The
Atlantic
“Ottessa Moshfegh is far too interesting a writer to be concerned
with the problem-solving at the heart of most mysteries. She
prefers questions to answers, and dwelling on what’s mysterious.
The concerns that animate Death in Her Hands will be familiar to
readers of her other books, including her 2018 bestseller My Year
of Rest and Relaxation. What, for example, does it mean to exist in
a body? How should one sensibly spend a day? Just how insidious is
it to be loved poorly? And what does madness look like when so much
of the world seems insane? . . . Moshfegh has a talent for
first-person narratives that feel fresh, strange, unreliable and
amusing.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Ottessa Moshfegh, the authorial doyenne of hermits and eccentrics,
misanthropes and recluses, is back with another novel narrated by
an alienated and alienating woman whose uncanny, idiosyncratic
voice compels us to read. Death in Her Hands is at once a satire of
and metafictional commentary on the mystery/crime genre, a study of
trauma’s effect on the psyche, and a reflection on the creative
process. . . . [A] striking and original contribution to Moshfegh’s
remarkable oeuvre.” —The Boston Globe
“Literature’s reigning queen of the profane, Ottessa Moshfegh, is
divisive: Readers tend to love her or hate her. If her latest novel
is subtler than her most recent works, it’s just as chilling—it
could be a jumping-off point for new readers. A self-contained
horror story that takes place inside the mind of an alluringly
unreliable narrator, the novel follows a 72-year-old widow who has
moved with her dog to a large plot of land where they are seemingly
at one with nature. When she finds a handwritten note that implies
a murder has taken place on her property, she works to solve it as
best she can. The narrator’s dark fantasies and less-than-pure
thoughts work especially well if you think of Death in Her Hands as
a sequel to Moshfegh’s deliciously gross and grotesque debut novel,
Eileen.” —Vulture
“A masterclass in suspense.” —The Economist
“No contemporary writer is as adept at malignant narrators as
Ottessa Moshfegh, whose characters are worthy of Poe or Dostoevsky.
Moshfegh’s latest, Death in Her Hands, is a worthy addition to her
oeuvre. . . . Death in Her Hands is not quite a murder mystery and
not quite gothic, but something far darker.” —The Millions
“A searching portrait of grief, loneliness and the comforts of
storytelling.” —Huffington Post
“Moshfegh is among the most talented writers working. I can think
of no one who writes with greater insight about isolation and the
often-macabre manner in which it warps the psyche.” —Washington
Independent Review of Books
“Dark doesn’t even begin to describe Ottessa Moshfegh’s latest
novel, Death in Her Hands. Try horrifying, macabre, fashionably
self-referential and exceptionally well-written—a book, as the
publisher’s blurb says, that asks us to consider how the stories we
tell ourselves both reflect the truth and keep us blind to it.
Plus, it’s got a great dog.” —Associated Press
“Death in Her Hands is not so much about solving a death as it is
about conjuring a life. In its apparent plotlessness, it posits
philosophical questions about the meaning of mortality. . . . Death
in Her Hands is a book that casts loneliness and freedom in
unexpected lights.” —The Washington Post
“Moshfegh, known for her screwball subversions of genre tropes and
her gleefully grotesque sensibility, here offers a thriller that
glitters with jagged details and unfolds mostly inside the
protagonist’s head.” —The New Yorker (Briefly Noted)
“Part crime thriller, part dark comedy, and totally
delightful.” —Good Housekeeping
“This unnerving latest from Moshfegh offers a truly creepy murder
mystery while commenting on our relationship to the genre itself.”
—Library Journal
“Perhaps the most jarring genre of fiction is the kind that takes
you deep into the gradual unraveling of a person's mind. Moshfegh
does a masterful job with Death In Her Hands, which follows a
protagonist who believes she's solving a murder. The book moves
seamlessly from suspenseful to horrifying, retaining the reader's
attention all the while.” —Marie Claire
“Cleverly unraveling, linguistically brilliant, and limning the
limits of reality, [Death in Her Hands] will speak to fans of
literary psychological suspense.” —Booklist
“From her bracing debut novel, Eileen, to her breakout 2018 hit, My
Year of Rest and Relaxation, Moshfegh has perfected an enervating,
claustrophobic style in which complex anti-heroines seek escape
through fantasy or delusion. Her latest novel, Death in Her Hands,
continues in this vein, depositing a recognizable, Moshfegh-ian
protagonist into a twisting, satirical murder mystery.” —WBUR
Radio
“A much subtler, more mature book—one in which suffering is
developed rather than declared.” —Bookforum
“As strange and haunting as anything of its kind I have ever read,
an unclassifiable masterpiece in that twilit border country of
literature between crime and magical realism.” —The Week
“Unlike anything else you’ll read all year. It’s Moshfegh at her
darkest and sharpest.” —HelloGiggles, Most Anticipated Books of
2020
“When it comes to evoking the jagged edge of contemporary anxiety,
there might not be a more insightful writer working today than
Moshfegh. That is, if the boundless dark potential of the human
psyche is your thing. If it’s not, this atmospheric, darkly comic
tale of a pathologically lonely widow and the thrills lurking in
her sylvan retreat might not be for you. But, sophisticated reader
that you are, you’re not afraid of the dark. Right?” —The Millions
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
