Death in Her Hands-Ottessa Moshfegh: A Life Collapsing

While on her daily walk in the woods alongside the company of her loyal dog, Charlie, Vesta, an elderly widow, encounters a mysterious 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 stranger in the area, having moved there just a year ago after the death of her husbund, confined in her solitary cabin in the woods ever since. The prospect of reporting her findings to the police seems to her an unnecessary humiliation. Instead, she decides to investigate on her own, dedicating herself in the solving of the mystery. In the absence of further clues, she invents them herself, the innermost repressed unfulfilled desires of her ego incorporating themselves in the story of Magda and how she met her fate. Gradually, reality and fiction blend into each other in an explosive amalgam that will strip the layers of her life one by one (the main on of them being her marriage to a bumptious academic who condescendingly neutered her spirit with every given opportunity in order to feed his superiority complex) revealing its ultimate core: misery and wasted potential. What she believed to be a comfortable-happy even-life turns out to be an absolute nightmare of constant humiliation under the disguise of care.

Another incredible novel from Moshfegh. A depressive-but surprisingly humorous at times-meditation, the chronicle of a life that was wasted, realized too late. Despite that fact, for the first time ever holds the reigns. Maybe not of her own life, but Magda's life-and death-is in her hands, to do with as she wishes.

Surprsingly, despite a few obvious similaraties, it's quite different than Tokarczuk's Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Much more than some people here had me belive before reading DIHH. Nontheless, it gives me a reason to re-read Drive Your Plow...which is something I've been wanting to do for quite some time. A remain a devoted fan of both ladies, I consider them to be some of the most bright voice in contemporary fiction, and can proudly say I loved both books.

For those who have read it, I'd like to know whether I was the only one laughing uncontrollably whenever Pastor Jimmy got brought up. Between that and Lapvona, Ottessa seems not to be the fondest of christianity, and honestly I don't blame her at all. In any case, we got some hilarious passages regarding the subject in both books. Hopefully, there will be some in her upcoming novel as well.