Ottessa Moshfegh is a really interesting writer, and I appreciate what she was trying to do in Death in Her Hands, but it just didn't work for me. The concept is an interesting one: a woman is walking her dog in the woods near her home, when she finds a handwritten note: "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body."

Vesta is a widow. She lives in a cabin in the woods with just her dog for company. She's recently moved to the area and doesn't know anyone, nor is she interested in getting to know anyone, as she views her neighbors as beneath her (there's a lot of classism and fat-shaming in her narrative). Bored and lonely (although she won't admit it), she becomes obsessed with the note and decides to solve the mystery of Magda. She invents a story in her mind, but the line between her invention and reality starts to blur. The story also has her reminiscing about her past and her marriage to a controlling husband. How much of the story she invents is based in her own reality?

I liked how unreliable Vesta is as a narrator. The majority of the book is her interior monologue, and it's all over the place. But this is also where the book didn't quite work for me. Is it trying to be murder mystery? Is it the story of a woman losing her mind? It's a bit of both, but I feel like it didn't really succeed at either. I found the ending rather abrupt, and although I don't mind books where not everything is wrapped up with a nice, neat bow, the ending felt unfinished to me. I think this book is going to be either love it or hate it for most people, so if you think it sounds interesting, don't let me review deter you. This is definitely a matter of preference.

I hated the ending of this book so much that it kind of ruined the whole thing for me. I don't think it was necessary for it to end that way and I feel that the author just recklessly does harm to the reader. I'm sure many people will have no problem with the ending but I was just really disappointed. Even though I had a strong feeling something like that would happen, I still feel it was a cheap, unnecessary, and cruel way to end the book. Ottessa Moshfegh is honestly not an author that would circ much at my library, but I thought I'd give this one a try to see if it might have more appeal to our community. It was clear pretty quickly in the book that it would not, but I was enjoying it at least right up until the end. Moshfegh is clearly a gifted writer but I feel like she just played a mean trick on the reader and I just felt like she was more interested in entertaining herself and emotionally manipulating the reader than anything else. Also pissed we never got to that island.

Ottessa Moshfegh is one of my favorite authors writing today. You may not ever like her characters, but they're still compelling. Even though everything they're doing is mostly inner dialogue, you want to be in this person's head.

Death in Her Hands is no different, though I'd say it's closer to Eileen than My Year of Rest and Relaxation in that I didn't necessarily enjoy the process of reading the book, but can appreciate it once I've finished. Our main character is a hermit widower with a love for her dog, which may sound very familiar if you've read Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. I was incredibly distracted by how similar these characters were, especially because they're both trying to solve a murder and they give their neighbors nicknames.

If you know what you're getting into with Ottessa, read this book! If you're maybe not as familiar with her, go read My Year of Rest and Relaxation first to see if you like this style. It's definitely different.

The process of reading this book was enjoyable. I liked the suspense and learning about the main character. I have no idea what happened and I definitely didn’t understand this book. I hope someone can explain it. It’s nothing like My Year of Rest and Relaxation and I can’t think of anyone that I’d recommend this book to.

The kooky, unreliable narrator of this book reminded me of the protagonist in one of my favourite books of last year "Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead" by Olga Tokarczuk. This a really quirky mystery that kept my attention, I think fans of Ottessa won't be disappointed!

The premise was really intriguing, but I really should have known better than to request a book where the synopsis mentions a dog. That usually spells disaster for the pet.

I enjoy unreliable narrators and stories where the truth is blurry, but this book's ending just ruined it for me. It was well written, but ultimately left me feeling sick to my stomach- and not in a good way.

I read the author's collection of stories, Homesick for Another World, when it came out and was left with a similar albiet less intense feeling. I like bizarre, I like ambiguity, but I think this author just isn't for me. She has an impressive way with words that is capturing, but it's not enough for me to feel good about what I just read.

I was really hoping to like this and it's a shame I didn't, but I'm sure this book will work for other readers.

Ottessa Moshfegh once again delivers a romp through the darkness in the mind of humans. By turns tragic, hilarious, entertaining and sad, Moshfegh writes internal monologues like n o other writer I know.

I was so excited about this book since I loved Moshfegh's previous novel, but Death in Her Hands didn't work for me. I was never fully invested or interested in the story. The plot moved forward at a glacial pace, and I found myself not wanting to pick up the book and continue.

Vesta seems like your average elderly widow at first, having moved onto an old summer camp property with her dog, but the further you go into her consciousness, the more peculiar and stranger she becomes. One day, she finds a note in the woods that proclaims "Magda is dead". Her obsession grows into a tall, elaborate tale of who Magda is and what she must have been like, and makes you question just how much she is projecting from her own life onto the fictional Magda's. Vesta is not so much a character you would like, but rather one you would find fascinating, how her mind jumps around so erratically. Death in Her Hands is an engrossing rabbit hole of the psyche.

‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’, this author’s previous novel, was so utterly brilliant that perhaps the next was bound to disappoint. And I fear it did. Yes, brilliance dances around this clever, meta, feminist deconstruction of a murder mystery. Yet, for all its originality, it doesn’t pack the compelling surrealism of the last book. There’s madness here, and a rather predictable slow revelation of a bad marriage and a loveless life. But it never breaks out of its own introversion. As internal stories go, this one seems too stuck in its interiority. Smart, yes; winning, no.

Death in Her Hands is another unique and intriguing work from Ottessa Moshfegh. I enjoyed it, even if it left me somewhat depressed. Something about its tone and focus brought to mind The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. This book was interesting and well-written, but I didn't like it as much as that one... probably because the subject matter and story arc were not just melancholy, but also disturbing. Death in Her Hands features a fascinating exploration of character and really strong writing, but I would not recommend it to those looking for a plot-driven novel. It is definitely not for anyone wanting a feel-good story.
3.5 stars

Huge thanks to the publisher, Penguin Random House, for offering a free ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

And this is a tricky book to review: after a few plot-driven narratives, it was a sudden change of pace which was a tad disconcerting and took a little while to find my feet. But once I did, this became a hauntingly quietly powerful exploration of a very troubled mind.

Vesta Gul, is that troubled mind and our protagonist and narrator. And – oh boy! – she is a deeply unreliable one prone to obsession, paranoia, panic and mythomania. Living reclusively on the edge of a lake with her dog Charlie for company, having moved across country on her husband’s death, in an old Girl Scouts summer camp. On one day, whilst walking Charlie in the woods, she discovers a note pinned down by rocks on the path:

“Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body.”

From there, Vesta’s mind leaps to assumptions and guesswork and imagination – recreating the person Magda from nothing more than the name and informed by nothing more than a passing familiarity with television crime drama and the language of Madga’s stream of consciousness is very cinematic – cliched? – in places:

Here is her dead body. Surely there was more to say. Where was Magda? Was it so hard to come up with a description of her corpse, tangled in the brush under a fallen tree, her face half sunken into the soft black dirt, her hands hog-tied behind her back, the blood from her stab wounds leaching into the ground? How hard was it to imagine a small golden locket glinting between sodden birch leaves, the chain broken and dashed through the new, tender, hairy grass?”

Oh but I love that description of the grass: “hairy”. That’s wonderfully vivid, if a little animalistic.

And why can’t life roll along the same familiar lines of cinematic cliche? It would make things much easier! Because that is how Magda expects life to work: she attempts to solve the – death? murder? case? – case of Magda with moments informed by Sherlockean attempts at deduction and amateur sleuthing, treating the case like a putative detective novel. And like all detective fiction writers, nothing really happens outside the confines of her own mind.

Or does it?

Magda’s whirling list of suspects – pushed on by character sheets printed from the internet – start to find resonances in the handful of characters in her secluded life: the neighbours, the local policeman, the disfigured store owner, a woman she bumps into in the library. Vesta is unhinged – obviously – but Moshfegh creates from her “mindspace” such a shifting sense of threat that you cannot help but share it. My grandparents suffered from dementia and I recall the horrors they had of burglars in the night, of the strange old woman in the mirror staring at them, of not recognising family or carers. Vesta’s voice felt eerily familiar.

Vesta is therefore hugely sympathetic, but difficult to like as a character: her prejudices are brought very much to centre stage and her comments about people’s appearances – she has a particularly thing about “fat” people – and her judgemental prickliness is authentic but unsettling. But the real story here, for me is Vesta’s own. Through her interior monologue, her stream of consciousness, we see snippets of her life with her husband Walter and their relationship, which shed much more light on the difficulties I had with Vesta’s characterisation. The slow revelations, the implication of toxicity in that relationship, was particularly haunting.

I would like to pay special attention to one episode that I particularly enjoyed: the episode with the neighbours on whose lawn Vesta collapses – the woman dying of cancer but hosting a murder mystery party to “celebrate me. Better now than when I’m gone.” These pages, where Vesta responds to, comments on and recoils from the neighbours brings the dark humour of the novel to the fore, but alongside that paranoid terror.

But, oh poor Charlie!

Ratings:

Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Plot / Pace: ⭐⭐⭐

Language: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I've come to terms with the fact that I love every book Otessa Moshfegh deigns to write for us. I'm not sure we deserve her, but I'll continue to read her work regardless, because I'm as shameless and raw and real as every female character she writes.

Vesta, her husband having passed and her life finally her own, moves to a lake cabin in a small town. She gets a dog, finds ways to amuse herself, settles into a routine. One morning walk, she finds a note on the ground that disturbs her, thrills her, and sets her on an imaginative tailspin. The story Vesta invents in her mind is pure fantasy, or is it? Every detail Vesta spins becomes another piece of the mystery of Magda. Her delusions are beautiful, and always hiding the actual plot of the story, buried deep underneath Vesta's psyche---regret, loneliness, shame, all the stuff that makes an unfulfilled life.

Moshfegh's Death in Her Hands is a departure from her previous work in regards to vulgarity. She usually errs on the side of vulnerability and natural human filth, but with the case of Vesta, she presented a perfectly painful display of human loneliness without excess. I was enamored by Vesta's imagination, torn apart by her reality. She is every woman who ever lived for someone else. She is so many women I've known, unmoored by their husband's death, free from their tyranny, but without any remaining strength for themselves. She is a vital character I wanted to hear from, in a society that discredits its elders (particularly female) and erases their agency. How often do you read a book through the eyes of a 60-70 year old woman? How often is that book deeply engrossing?

Never stop writing, Ottessa.

I recieved an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book and will recommend it often!

I read "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" back when it was released in 2018, and hugely enjoyed Ottessa Moshfegh's literary yet darkly comedic style. When I saw she had a new book, I jumped at the chance to read it.

The good:
Moshfegh has an immensely readable prose, and since the novel is the narrator's stream-of-consciousness thoughts, it has a really nice flow. There are also some great unsettling moments, as you dig further and further into Vesta's psyche--and slowly start to realize how past abuse and present isolation and paranoia are contributing to her current state of mind.

The confusing:
The ending was confusing, and rather abrupt. I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything less from an unreliable narrator, but it was less a sense of realization that we'd been viewing Vesta the wrong way, and more the shock and surprise you feel when a book suddenly ends. I tried flicking back and forth to see if I had missed something, but nope. Also <spoiler>a dog is killed, which is always upsetting</spoiler.

In short, I was really intrigued and caught up in the story, until the end let me down a little. I've seen this book compared to "McGlue," so take that as you will; just know going into this that it might not end as satisfactorily as you might wish!

Death in Her Hands delves into the mind of septuagenarian Vesta Gul. It's not a very fun place. Vesta is out walking with her dog one day when she finds a mysterious note, "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." So Vesta decides to investigate. I have incredibly mixed feelings about this book. Ottessa Moshfegh is a brilliant writer and amazing at character writing, especially somewhat despicable characters. The concept - a murder investigation that largely takes place inside one person's mind- is interesting. But... the whole book is a super unlikable old lady's internal monologue. She doesn't talk to another person for well over half the book. I did not enjoy reading it. I would definitely recommend this to other readers, especially those who've enjoyed Moshfegh's previous works, but sadly it wasn't for me.

I loved Otessa's book "A year of rest and relaxation" and thought I would be in for something similar here. However, the only thing I found similar was the story consisting mostly of the interior dialogue of the main character - which I enjoy. However, the story and plot itself I found stultifying. Essentially an old woman creates a murder mystery in her own mind and fills in the characters as to who would be her "suspects." Without any real clues backing up her suppositions, other than the note found in the woods, it felt, overall like we were actually in the writer's head as she creates characters for a story she's about to write. Not the actual story. The "payoff" at the end felt not earned and not interesting after spending so much time with the hypotheticals Vesta created.

A clever, genre-bending detective story. A woman finds a note in the woods and embarks on a twisted journey to find answers. In this novel, Moshfegh moves away from dialogue and instead focuses on the hilariously written internal ramblings of the precarious psyche of our 70 odd year-old narrator. It is deliciously disturbing, yet comedic, if you can catch on to her deadpan black humor... Upon finishing, I was wishing for more, but It was still a fun read. I love her writing style and you can't deny her originality. I will read anything she writes.

This is a tough book to review without adding spoilers. I have read two of Moshfegh's previous books. I really liked My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but did not like McGlue at all, so I went into this book with reservations. I was hoping since this book was set in present times, it would be more like MYORAR, but it unfortunately read more like McGlue. The premise at first was exciting. What is the mysterious note all about? While I felt like it was a fast and "Easy" read, and the storyline should have made me want to keep going, I couldn't seem to pay attention to this book for more than 20 minutes at a time so it took me days to get through, where this could have easily been a one sitting book.
Once the lines between reality and imagination/insanity started to blur, I lost interest even more, but I still held out hope for there being a clear explanation for what had happened at the end. If there was an explanation, I missed it. Finally, there is an absolutely unnecessary horrific scene in the last chapter, which did in any hope of me liking this book.

Vesta Gul is physically and mentally isolated, having moved across the country at 70-some years old with her dog after her husband's death. Little by little, the reader gains insight into Vesta's unstable mind as she unravels clues about a menacing note she finds on her remote property.
A really unusual character study, will be appreciated by those who enjoyed her other books, I think. There is a building dread in this book that is just masterfully done. A bit meta in parts as Vesta creates scenes in her mind about the note's meaning - imagined or real. The open ending made me wish I could discuss what happened with another reader right away. Looking forward to any author interviews that reveal more about the book's meaning.