Death in Her Hands A Novel
Reviews
I usually love open endings but this one felt too empty. Rather than making the reader contemplate and reflect, this book non-conclusive ending frustrates me instead. Still, I really enjoyed it.
Wow I haven't been this bored by a book in a long time. I wanted to like this, as I expected it to go in the murder mystery route but it honestly is just one long stream of consciousness that doesn't lead to anything. I also normally like unlikeable and unreliable narrators but I did not like this lady. I fear Moshfegh isn't for me :(
If I found a random note in the woods like Vesta, I’d probably do the same thing start solving an imaginary crime, create a whole backstory, and by the end of the week, I’d have a full on Netflix documentary going in my head. Moral of the story: never leave me alone with my thoughts!
We’ll all be Magda and Vesta one day
I feel like this was written to punk people who read excessive crime fiction, and I like that.
"Do people do such things?" "Lonely people do." Death in Her Hands is Otessa Moshfegh's follow-up to her incredibly popular novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation. For myself, as well as it seems many people, this new story falls flat. Although Moshfegh does what she does best, taking a serious genre or idea, and satirizing the heck out of it, Death in Her Hands just didn't hold that same spark while reading. Vesta Gul is a 70-something widow living off-the-grid in small-town America when she stumbles upon a note in the forest: "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." (spoiler: there's not actually any body). Upon this discovery, Vesta takes it upon herself to solve the mystery of Magda's murder, though very early on in this tale we start to question Vesta herself. This is told stream-of-consciousness, and Vesta is... unstable. Within her head she creates wild and vividly detailed scenarios, invents characters with complete lives and backstories, even thinks the local cop of some kind of murderous villain. Vesta's thoughts would also often turn inward, highlighting regrets and missed opportunities from her earlier life with her dead husband, Walter, whose control over her and her life is the cause of most of these regrets. She ends up pondering "What if..." - what if I had been an artist? What if I had left? What if I had felt pleasure from my relationship? These what ifs are mirrored by the what ifs Vesta is asking of the crime. The idea is solid, and the writing was fantastic as always, but.. this book was boring to me, plain and simple. For a book marketed as a thriller, there was very little thrilling about it. Vesta's rambling thoughts honestly were distracting and couldn't hold my attention for too long, which is why this took me a full week to read - I could only take in small bits at a time. At parts, I did find myself into the mystery - did anything actually happen? Is Vesta losing her mind? I did enjoy the ideas of paranoia and conspiracies stemming from Vesta's loneliness. I think reflecting on it now that I'm finished, I appreciate it more than I did while reading. But in the end, there really was no resolution (that ending is a whole other issue) and it just was a bit of a miss from Moshfegh for me.
I want to start by saying i love ottessa, but tbh the book was a bore.
in terms of writing and the way the story (and mystery) is structured this is good i enjoyed it a lot. but as a whole? a snoozefest. i cant give it a lower rating bc i do think the writing saves it & i get what moshfegh was trying to do but meh idk
wtf just happened
she had at least one death in her hands so there's that
i think i just learned how to accept death
Really enjoyed it up until the ending
3.75 i adore ottessa moshfegh’s writing style but im still looking for one of her stories that i really love
The synopsis of the book seemed really interesting, and I thought this would be a subversion of the murder mystery novel. Except nothing really happens. I appreciate the protagonist being a more mature woman (which is a rare choice, to me) but as per Moshferg fashion, she is difficult to root for.
I didn’t like the lack of plot and had to trudge to finish it. Everything happens in the protagonist’s mind but the story or delusion or writing was not captivating enough to keep my interest. My least favourite from Moshferg thus far.
the rambling got me really steady at reading it in one sitting, i loved that it confuses you the entire book to keep you into reading more.
Solid 3.5
I wanted to DNF but I wanted another book towards my reading goal more
Maybe just not for me?
I thought this was bad for the first half, then very good the second half, and I just finished it and started crying and I don't know why.
~just thoughts just strange vibes~
Painfully boring which is sad. I was really looking forward to this read. I just don't like I like her writing style.
if you're into the whole meta-fictional/ stream of consciousness/ realism kinda genre then you'd like this one. if you like your mysteries cozy and streamlined with a good whodunnit moment, might wanna skip this one
Highlights
Decide and move forward. You spend so much time playing in your mind, ,like a sandbox. Everything just slipping though your fingers, nothing solid to hold.
But I supposed it was indeed the job of the writer to belittle the miracles of this Earth, to separate one question out of the infinite mystery of life and answer it in some sniveling way.
There was great satisfaction in shoving a bad book through the return slot and hearing it splat against the other books in the bin on the other side of the librarian's desk. “You can just hand that to me," the librarian said. Oh no, I liked to shove it through. It made me feel powerful.
“Oh, forgive me, I didn't see you there," I'd whisper.
Wise, I thought. Smart. Whoever had written the note understood that by masking one's peculiarities, one invokes authority. There is nothing as imposing as anonymity.
You spend so much time playing in your mind, like a sandbox. Everything just slipping through your fingers, nothing solid to hold.
#me
“Is that what life was like? As much as I complained of Walter leaving me alone at night in Monlith, or traveling too much, there was always money. There was always heat, and nice carpets and fluffy towels, food in the fridge, a newspaper on the front step every morning, and I was embraced from time to time. In the winter I had an entire closet full of warm things to wear.”
“But people lied all the time. It was part of what kept us whole as individuals. A little lying never hurt anybody. It kept the bounds of what one person was distinct from what another person was.”
“Reading was different, of course. I liked books. Books were quiet. They wouldn’t scream in my face or get offended if I gave up on them. If I didn’t like what I read, I could throw the book across the room. I could burn it in my fireplace. I could rip out the pages and use them to blow my nose, or in the bathroom. I never did any of that, of course—most of the books I read came from the library. When I didn’t like something, I just shut the book and put it on the table by the door, spine facing the wall so that I wouldn’t have to look at it again. There was great satisfaction in shoving a bad book through the return slot and hearing it splat against the other books in the bin on the other side of the librarian’s desk. “You can just hand that to me,” the librarian said. Oh no, I liked to shove it through. It made me feel powerful.
“Oh, forgive me, I didn’t see you there,” I’d whisper.”
“That was how life seemed to be—finding things to do to pass the time. The less I’d looked at the clock, the better I knew I’d enjoyed my day.”
“Naive, actually, to think that a mere signature was so binding. It’s just a little ink on paper, just a scribble, my name. They couldn’t come after me, drag me back to Monlith, simply because I’d moved a pen around.”
“That morning with the meadowlark was, perhaps, a significant day for Charlie. He discovered his innate purpose, some instinct kicked in. But what could I possibly want with that dead bird? I hadn’t shot it down, nobody had. It was an odd thing to feel impelled to retrieve. Such are instincts. They aren’t always reasonable, and often they lead us down dangerous paths.”
An ax murderer wouldn’t be very quick on his feet, carrying an ax and all.
This book appears in the club 19th century
