Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Her first book, McGlue, a novella, won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. Her stories have been published in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Granta, and have earned her a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Plimpton Discovery Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction; My Year of Rest and Relaxation, her second novel, was a New York Times bestseller.
"Dark, confident, prickling stories . . . . Moshfegh uses ugliness
as if it were an intellectual and moral Swiss Army knife . . . Her
stories veer close to myth in a manner that can resemble fiction by
the English writer Angela Carter. There’s some Flannery O’Connor,
Harry Crews and Katherine Dunn in her interest in freaks and
quasi-freaks . . . At her best, she has a wicked sort of command.
Sampling her sentences is like touching a mildly electrified fence.
There is a good deal of humor in “Homesick for Another World,” and
the chipper tone can be unnerving. It’s like watching someone grin
with a mouthful of blood.”
- Dwight Garner, New York Times
“A fluent, deeply talented artist . . . Moshfegh quickly
established herself as an important new voice in the literary
world, and her concerns for those isolated not only in the margins
of society but within the physical confines of the body itself
mirrored the work of brilliant predecessors like Mary Gaitskill,
Christine Schutt and, in some ways, Eileen Myles. Homesick for
Another World continues that exploration but with a wider range,
over a larger landscape. It’s a paradox that in order to locate a
sense of national character—and that ever-elusive American
dream—art must continually probe the places where that dream seems
to have all but disappeared.”
—The New York Times Book Review
"I can’t recall the last time I laughed this hard at a book.
Simultaneously, I’m shocked and scandalized. She’s brilliant, this
young woman."—David Sedaris
“On second and third reading, these stories reveal coils of plain
language and quick narratives tight as songs. What is at first
urgent and disorienting becomes a hymn, improving with repetition,
all of it worth memorizing.”
—Village Voice
“[A] stunning debut short story collection . . . Moshfegh displays
a preternatural ability in short fiction, her stories impeccably
shaped, her sentences sharp, and her voice controlled and widely
confident; the stories of Homesick For Another World are
near perfect examples of the form . . . What makes the pieces
composing Homesick so thrilling, in addition to their
technical inscrutability, is their ability to surprise—with their
ferocity, depravity, and casual violence, with their very ability
to so consistently unsettle . . . Amid the collection’s dark tone,
Moshfegh imbues an equally dark humor, at times absurd, at others
melancholy and bone-dry . . . If you’re the kind of person who
laughs when the grandma gets axed in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,”
you’ll be right at home in Homesick.”
—AV Club
“Ottessa Moshfegh's story collection, "Homesick for Another World,"
couldn't come at a better time. Notions of class and power are in
an unpredictable flux. A new elite rises, flipping the deck into
the air. Nobody knows where the cards will land. So here comes
Moshfegh, whose imaginative writing about train-wreck characters,
rich and poor, adheres to a relentlessly dim worldview where a
divided America comes together in the muck . . . The best stories
in the collection, however, contain memorable, conflicting images
of squalor and beauty, chaos and pattern.”
— Associated Press
“All psychologically astute, astringently funny and wonderfully
entertaining.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Startling and impressive new short story collection. . . Despite
her unsparing dissection of their paranoias, fetishes, and
failings, Moshfegh doesn’t condescend to her characters; she is
both gimlet-eyed and compassionate . . . there is both piercing wit
and unexpected poignancy to be found in Moshfegh’s original and
resonant collection.”
—Boston Globe
“The characters in this collection are an unlovely bunch but make
for an irresistible read . . . Moshfegh — a Boston-born, Los
Angeles-based writer whose Man Booker-shortlisted novel Eileen
(2016) infused the same sensibility into a witty, skillfully told
suspense story — has other tones and tricks at her command. She
writes terrific, attention-grabbing openings, and impactful last
lines that don’t strain for a lapidary effect. Her damaged-girl
deadpan snark is second to none . . . the authority of her
storytelling means that she’s able to bring the reader along with
her on some surprising paths to her typically desolate
destinations.”
—Financial Times
“Homesick for Another World will scorch you like a
blowtorch.” —John Waters, The New York Times Book Review
“Stunning short story collection . . . There's not a story
in Homesick for Another World that's anything less than
original and perfectly constructed. Moshfegh's talent is unique,
and her characters — unfiltered, cold, frequently pathetic — are
all the more memorable for their faults and obliviousness. Anyone
who's experienced the special kind of homesickness that lacks a
home will find something to relate to in Moshfegh's unsettling,
sharp stories.”
—NPR
“These stories are Moshfegh’s deepest, darkest moments of
introspection. Let them in.”
—Electric Literature
“The title and cover of Homesick for Another World might lead
you to believe Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories are set in outer space,
but she’s done the opposite: approached Earth as if it were an
alien planet . . . Moshfegh imbues her anguished realism with equal
parts murky dread and clever turns of phrase. But for stories about
isolation and loneliness, they are also oddly funny… a short
story collection that’s as consistent—and often brilliant—as they
come.”
— GQ
“Ottessa Moshfegh’s startling new stories are darkly, prickly,
gross — and impressive….
Despite her unsparing dissection of their paranoias, fetishes, and
failings, Moshfegh doesn’t condescend to her characters; she is
both gimlet-eyed and compassionate. These are “sad. . . lonely and
troubled” people, but many are improbably appealing; even the most
twisted and tortured have recognizably human qualities . . .
if you can stomach the discomfort, there is both piercing wit
and unexpected poignancy to be found in Moshfegh’s original and
resonant collection.” — Boston Globe
“Psychologically astute, astringently funny and wonderfully
entertaining . . . Moshfegh's singular stories are unified by bold
ideas, intoxicating detail and perfectly calibrated humor and
pathos.”
— Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Sentences looped and pulled into perfect slipknots: Moshfegh’s ear
is original, and her command of form, expert. I would read anything
she writes.”
—Harper’s
“Homesick for Another World showcases her mastery with tales of a
range of creeps and weirdos in despair… This cast of boors may not
be the kind of folks readers would seek out to spend time with in
real life. But in Moshfegh’s stories, their company is
irresistible.”
—Time
“Homesick for Another World is an impressive study of human
vulnerability and self-deception, through which the reader is
guided by a cynical and darkly funny literary voice.”
—1843 Magazine
“Expertly crafted stories . . . There’s not a throw-away story in
the collection. Each resonates with seemingly effortless, ineffable
prose, rarely striking an inauthentic note—particularly memorable
are the endings, which often land to devastating effect. The
author’s acute insight focuses obsessively, uncomfortably,
humorously on excreta, effluvia, and human foible, drilling to the
core of her characters’ existential dilemmas. Moshfegh is a
force.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred)
“[Moshfegh] is fearless in her probing of her characters’ emotional
wounds, proceeding with such a sure touch readers are compelled,
not repelled. The directness of her style demands that we register
the life 'stuffed between the mattress and the wall.' While it is
not always an easy read, this collection will leave readers with a
sharper, more compassionate sense of the human condition.”
— Booklist (starred review)
"A smartly turned and admirably consistent collection about love
and its discontents."
— Kirkus
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