mwartime 's review for:

Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh

2.0

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So, we've got an unreliable narrator in a story that takes place mostly in the narrator's head, and the inside of that person's head is dark and cruel? Having noticed a pattern of fatphobia in the author's previous works I wasn't surprised to see this narrator was deeply fatphobic, anti-blue collar, and even casually using the racist slur "g*psy." But I am sort of perplexed by the deep attention that was spent being extremely fatphobic in the text. It was distracting, basically, in a book that was already distracting because the bulk of it takes place in the narrator's imagination.

I've been following Moshfegh's writing for years because I like her writing style and find her a compelling storyteller. This was neither a compelling story, nor even her clearest, sharpest prose. The attention spent describing fat women was actually painful. I hope critics take a closer look at this novel instead of lumping it into more "anti-hero" or "unreliable narrator" crap and calling it a day. A good writer, which I believe Moshfegh is, should be challenged, not indulged.