Death in Her Hands: A Novel

Pretty much any kind of a review is a spoiler for this book, since it relies on unexpected twists for its entertainment factor. If you already know anything about what's going to happen, it's spoiled.I gave this book four stars because it was a page turner for me. The book starts out with this opinionated, a little snooty, but basically sweet little old lady getting on with life after the death of her husband, with her wonderful dog. Little by little we keep learning more and worse things about her husband, and we keep learning more about the narrator. At some point we become aware that she's seriously mental.I took off a star because it is true that the book doesn't seem to have any meaning. To me, a literary book should be asking questions.This book seems to be a sketch of how terrifying it would be to lose your mind. I guess it is meant to be a horror book, maybe. I can't decide if it is that or maybe the author has a particular diagnosis in mind that she is trying to show. It's not clear whether she's developing dementia or she has had an ongoing psychosis. She seems to drink whole bottles of wine by herself; maybe that is playing into her issues. Or maybe she'd be even worse without it.I also took off a star because the title and marketing are bad. People picked up this book thinking it was a who-done-it. They didn't appreciate being tricked, and it attracted the wrong readers.In any case, this book made me thankful my 90-year-old mother is safely parked in a nice independent living community. This will not happen to her.

The impression I got from "Death in Her Hands" is that, of all Ottessa Moshfegh's novels, this one is closest in spirit to the short stories in her collection "Homesick for Another World." While I've enjoyed each of her novels, that collection is my favorite of all her books.As with any work of art, the nuances are all-important: beyond the plot of an elderly woman named Vesta finding and deciphering a cryptic note saying that someone was murdered, what counts is the experience of the protagonist and, therefore, the reader. Vesta's psyche is on display as she struggles to make sense of the note and live her life -- the distinction between these two activities becoming increasingly blurred.The writing itself is seamless, pithy, superbly crafted. But the end (last four pages) missed the mark for me -- I thought the novel was building up to something more clever, less facile. However, as I've been pondering it, it's been growing on me. "Less is more" and all that.Having checked out some of the other reviews on amazon, I noticed many reviewers assume Vesta is becoming psychotic. This would be the conventional -- expected -- interpretation. However, I think it doesn't fit because Vesta's voice is rational and common-sensical. Another possibility is she's tapping into the quantum-physics nature of the universe (where time, space, and reality are co-created -- some scientists say wholly created -- by consciousness), and the various wildly-implausible and mystifying synchronicities she comes across are just par for that course. Her "breakdown" may be a shamanic breakthrough as she outgrows the bourgeois prison of her lifelong persona.(For more on quantum physics, see books such as "The Quantum Revelation" by Paul Levy or "The Physics of Miracles" by Richard Bartlett.)Also, some reviewers complained of "animal cruelty" (which does not actually occur in the book) and "fat phobia." It's as if these readers want to read only literature which excludes things they don't like or that are "not nice." Obviously, that being the case, their potential reading list would be quite small.Overall, "Death in Her Hands" is a compelling novel from a major talent.

Widowed, Vesta is walking through freshening birches on the abandoned Girl Scout camp where she's making her home with Charlie, her dog. On the trail is a note:"Her name was Magda.Nobody will ever know who killed her.It wasn't me.Here is her dead body."Except. There is no body. And who was Magda? Who killed her?As Vesta searches for clues, there are details that create an illusion of certainty. The security of her isolation exposes her vulnerability. Imagination becomes a risk. And the memory of her history is as fragile as Magda's.Moshfegh does everything she can to push the reader away from empathy or sympathy for Vesta. Her mindspace is not where you want to spend a lot of time. But the pull is grave and irresistible.

I really enjoyed the overall concept of this book, but it was rambling and tedious to get through. Almost gave up on it at about the halfway point because so little had happened to progress the story. The seemingly endless inner dialogue of the main protagonist was incredibly boring at times. I felt satisfied by the ending, the story really came together, but I'm not sure if it was worth getting there.

The one star reviews of this book seem to either crave a more literal storytelling or be offended at the climax which involves the narrator and her dog, which is a silly thing to be offended by in my humble opinion, especially given the dog's state. And jeez it's putatively a book about murder after all - if anything there's a surprising lack of violence.This is not an author who wraps up stories nicely - you can feel her straining to stitch things together at the end.But oh man can she develop a character! The half dozen people in this book are all fascinating, and the book's premise combine with the author's gift for writing to make this a rare page turner.BUT - it's probably a mistake to start with this book if you don't already know the author.

The unreliable narrator of Ottessa Moshfegh's third novel is seventy-two-year-old Vesta Gul, a widow who lives alone in the woods in a lakeside cabin. When walking her dog, Charlie, she finds a note on the ground which says: "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." However, there is no body to be found nor any evidence of violence in the nearby area, so Vesta decides that instead of contacting the local police she will keep the note and make her own investigations. And so begins a very strange and unsettling story where we see Vesta, a woman who was controlled and undermined by her late husband and suffering from past traumas of her own, set out on a journey to recreate in her mind what she thinks might have happened to Magda and how the young woman might have met her death. However, once Vesta has started on her journey and has conjured up a life and a whole personality for the dead woman, she (and the reader) begins to have trouble working out what is real and what is fabrication. And as the story unravels and we enter into the mind of a woman who has become disassociated from those around her, we become witness to her alienation, her paranoia and her mental disintegration.A clever and compelling story which captures the mind of a woman who has difficulty in differentiating fact from fiction and whose history is gradually revealed to the reader as she struggles to process what has happened to her - both in the present and in the past. Although I thought this was a compelling read and started and finished it in practically one sitting, I found it a rather troubling story and although darkly funny in places it was one that left me feeling rather unsettled - and the scene towards the end, involving an animal, was something I found very upsetting and although I can understand the author wanted something startling to demonstrate the unravelling of Vesta's mind, I feel sure she could have created something better - but obviously I can't discuss this further without revealing spoilers. So, in summary, a clever and thought-provoking story (and not a murder mystery as one might think by the blurb) but one that has left me feeling rather confused about how to rate it fairly by Amazon's star system - therefore I've given it three stars but I've changed my mind several times about the rating - whilst reading the book and even during the writing of this review - and may come back and change it once the story has had time to settle.3 Stars.

I've read everything Ottessa Moshfegh has written. I think her writing is original, closely observed and darkly humorous, and she can offer up some of the sharpest, most lucid sentences I've recently read in American prose. But not so with this novel. It has the feel of something rushed, a moderately interesting idea pounded and squeezed for everything it has to offer until in the end it is bound to disappoint. It follows a similar narrative arc to 'Eileen', but doesn't have the same power of character and page-turning energy. The characters in this one have a stock feel to them, and although that might be part of the overall novel's design I wanted them to be more. The writing has an unedited cloudiness about it that I was surprised to encounter in such an accomplished author.I persisted with this book only because I enjoyed her previous stuff, but if it was my first exposure to her work I may well have got bored and sacked it off. For me the Moshfegh ranking would go like this: 'Homesick for Another World', 'Eileen', 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation', 'Death in Her Hands' (the novella 'McGlue' I'd put in a special category all by itself because I think Ottessa was possessed by some alien when that came out of her - mindboggling). So, bear the ranking in mind when you consider this purchase, but by no means overlook the benefits of reading at least some of what she's written. I'm definitely still a fan.

This book wasn’t what I was expecting - and not in a good way. It was the ramblings of a woman who was slowly losing her mind in the woods over a note she found on a dog walk that implied a girl named Magda had been murdered. That’s it, that’s all. If you’re looking for a thriller or expect her to be actually solving a realcrime, don’t pick up this book.This style of book was not for me. I was hoping for a thriller crime solving book, and instead, I got the ramblings of a bitter old woman (Vesta) reviewing her boring life and her unhappy marriage after the death of her husband. All the while, she is making up what may have happened to this girl and then losing her mind over it.The only thing I liked about this book was the characterisation of Vesta. The fact that she basically looks down her nose at most of the inhabitants of her small town, hates fat people, and does a rather horrible thing at the end of the novel, made her a wholly unlikeable character and unreliable narrator - and I actually enjoyed that. I liked that she wasn’t a nice old lady. I wasn’t rooting for her or feeling sorry for her. I detested her and I think that was the point. In spite of the great characterisation, I hated the long winded rambling where very little happens. I don’t mind forays into the mundane but this was just boring as hell at some points and the story didn’t really progress. There was nothing to solve. This wasn’t about a murder, it was about her descent into madness - but that isn’t what the book is sold as. It’s a rambling stream of consciousness and not my cup of tea.

Where to start with Vesta, eh? She is a sort isn't she, I think she'd be described or even ascribe, as a wily old woman.She's sprightly for seventy odd, didn't like Walter too much. But wow, not sure how to describe this book but Vesta finds a note in the woods next to her secluded cabin in the woods, even though she has neighbours, but not neighbourly neighbours but the atmosphere was all engulfing. I raced through is in a day and a bit, after I'd started and finished The Moon's a Balloon by David Niven.If I could add infinity stars, I would. But it, borrow it but read it.

*spoiler alert*I was very excited for this book as it has been recommended by a lot of thriller/mystery readers but I must say I was utterly disappointed. Nothing really happens. Don't get me wrong it is well written but truly ... nothing happens . It's filled with descriptions and descriptions of the dead girl and what she would be like and who the suspects would be. She talks about that, her dog and her dead husband. That is it - personally bored me