Death in Her Hands

Death in Her Hands was a slow, deeply introspective look into the mind of a lonely woman perhaps looking for purpose, perhaps spiraling. But it was this lack of clarity that I think made this such a fascinating read.

Vesta Gul is an old woman who lives alone with her dog Charlie. She moved to a small cabin next to lake a few years ago after the death of her husband, and spends her days going on walks, talking to her dog, and sometimes venturing into town. With no phone or friends, she's content in her almost completely isolated life. That is until she comes across a note found in the woods one day while walking Charlie. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no body to be found. This kicks off what seems like an obsessive spiral of Vesta fabricating an intricate life of who Magda was, who killed her, and what she can do to find out. But without any concrete knowledge that any of these people are real, it feels as if Vesta is falling into some level of paranoid psychosis, fixating on this perhaps false narrative she's built in her head as she also ruminates on her own past.

Critics of this book will say nothing happens, it's just cover to cover ramblings of a paranoid woman while she also keeps thinking about her husband and how much she loves her dog. But I think that's a very disingenuous, surface level reading of the text, and I think the strengths of this book really come through when you let yourself join Vesta in her grief spiral that is the true plot to this story. I think the flexibility in how it can be interpreted makes it interesting, and a very fun book to reflect upon. Personally, I feel like it was a disturbing peek into the last grasp of lucidity an aging woman has as the end of her life approaches. We have this seemingly uncharacteristic obsession with something that doesn't seem to matter mixed with deep grief and rumination about her life mixing together to create a beautifully written, sensory surreal story.

There's not a strong narrative plot here, but that's what lent it its strength. Keeping the reader always at arms length for what exactly was going on allowed us to empathize with what I think were Vesta's own thoughts and experiences. But despite this seemingly complex execution, in typical Moshfegh fashion, the writing was simple and beautiful.

I'm biased because I've never read a book by Otessa Moshfegh that I didn't like, but this was stellar in my opinion. Not my favorite of hers, but a unique testament to her skill as a writer.