Death Becomes Her

Septuagenarian widow Vesta Gul is walking her beloved dog Charlie in the birch woods near her home when she stumbles across a handwritten note on the path, pinned to the ground with small black stones. The obscure message sparks the action that propels this novel:

Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body.

Vesta looks around and sees no evidence of a body, no clothing, no disturbance that would indicate that Magda is or was nearby. She pockets the note and sets off determined to find out what happened to Magda.

Living the life of a hermit, Vesta has a simple existence without a phone or TV in a cabin by a lake that was once part of an old Girl Scouts camp.  She drives into town once a week to stock up on library books and groceries, but has no real social network, spending her time talking to her dog and engaging in imagined conversations with her late husband, Walter. Her efforts to solve the mystery of Magda drive Vesta to the brink of her fragile 'mindspace' as she creates a persona for the victim and a list of potential suspects.  

Ottessa Moshfegh's Death in her Hands (2020) is a strange little novel. Written in first person, the author is deep inside the head of her protagonist - an unlikable, unstable, bitter woman - and the reader is never certain what is real and what are delusions. Vesta is a heartbreaking character who has been disappointed throughout her life, and this regret manifests itself in the imagined life she creates for the people around her.

Death in her Hands is cleverly written and easy to read, but I am honestly not sure how I feel about it. My engagement with the novel ebbed and flowed over the few hours I spent reading it. Gripped at the start, about forty pages in I thought about giving up, continued on and became enthralled, and then ended flat and perplexed. While Moshfegh is a talented writer who can weave a multilayered story, I definitely feel something was missing here and wonder what it was all about.