Homesick for Another World
Stories
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4.2 • 174 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017
An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time
"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
Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, short-listed for the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel.
And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the echt Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In 14 expertly crafted stories, Moshfegh (Eileen) examines characters and situations too weird to be real and too real to be fiction, with themes of alienation, ennui, displacement, sexual neuroses, and addiction. A voyeuristic old man steels his courage to approach the beautiful, aloof woman working at the counter of the local arcade ("Mr. Wu"); an aspiring actor hooked on motivational clich s spins out of control in a breakup saga ("The Weirdos"); a high school English teacher has an on-again/off-again relationship with the drug-dealing "zombies at the bus depot" ("Slumming"); a grieving husband uncovers evidence of his dead wife's infidelity and explores his own sexuality ("The Beach Boy"); an underachieving suitor embarks on a desperate quest for a cheap ottoman that holds the key to his quixotic romantic endeavors ("Dancing in the Moonlight"). 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.
Customer Reviews
Good book for busy scheduled people
This book scratched by brain with its constant twists and turns. I enjoyed the unsettling vibe this gave me. 10/10 would recommend.
No
I loved Eileen. I loved My Year of Rest. This collection of stories, though, drove me nuts with boredom. Each story ends abruptly and each has a similar kind of vagueness in its ending. Won’t be revisiting this one.