lydiature_ 's review for:

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

3.0

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Moshfegh is a talented writer--that's obvious. Last year, I read her collection of short stories called "Homesick for Another World," which left me disturbed and intrigued at the same time. I decided to read "Death in Her Hands" instead of "My Year of Rest and Relaxation," mainly because I wanted to read a short book and feel accomplished (story of my life).

I was intrigued at the idea of a book written from an old woman's perspective. I'm a sucker for unreliable narrators. It was just Vesta, her thoughts, and vibes in the woods. The writing style felt confessional, and I really like how Moshfegh pulled me in. I could envision everything that was happening.

Vesta was perceptive, biting, and vicious and Moshfegh captured that perfectly. But what she didn't do well with (in my humble opinion) was the ending. I understand books like this--the authors want you to reread to dig for knowledge, but even when I did that, it still didn't make sense. The sudden name change (from "Ghod" to "God") was confusing, Vesta's situation was confusing--even Charlie's thing was confusing. Did it all have a meaning? If it did, it would have been nice for Moshfegh to actually list that out (and not subtly), because most people here were straight up confused. There are certain things that an author should leave up for the reader to find out, but this isn't the case. The book had been leading up to a climax, and just ended up being blah. Again, if most people are confused (in a bad way) at the ending, you didn't execute it correctly.

Two other things I disliked about this book: 1) the pacing and 2) the chapter length. Both were extremely SLOW and LONG. Granted, there were a few things Moshfegh slid in to make the book more interesting along the way, but with the execution of the ending, I personally don't think it was worth it.

I would have given this a 4, just for the writing style alone, but there were things I couldn't just ignore (poor execution, pacing, chapter length, lack of clarity, etc). I still recommend this--maybe I just overthought things. I will still read Moshfegh's other books!

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