"Death in Her Hands" by Ottessa Moshfegh

I chose Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation for my book club last year, and I was as fascinated with the novel as with the author herself. Death in Her Hands certainly shares similarities with My Year, particularly its unreliable female narrator, though its dissonance from reality seems somewhat less significant, and its mystery (if there is one) ultimately unfulfilling.

The most important element of Death in Her Hands is that it begins with a note 72-year-old Vesta Gul finds in the woods while walking her dog, Charlie. Vesta has recently moved to a rustic cabin in the woods in the small town of Levant after the death of her husband. The note reads, "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body.” There is no body nor any evidence of a crime, but Vesta becomes obsessed with the mystery of Magda's death anyway.

Soon, Vesta has created an entire backstory for Magda, whom she has decided is a young immigrant illegally living in Levant. She's decided the note was written by a young man named Blake who has a crush on Magda and has allowed her to live in his mother's basement. She crafts an entire range of suspects, from a monster named Ghod who takes the form of a police officer to a disfigured man named Henry who works at a gas station.

There's some pleasure in this absurd build-up, as Vesta cluelessly attempts to use a computer in the library and "finds" further clues. Eventually, she even "meets" much of her cast of characters, including Blake's mom "Shirley" and Officer Ghod.

While Vesta is obsessed with the mystery of Magda, perhaps the real mystery is of Vesta herself, whose life we learn about in small snippets. Her disdain for her late husband eventually becomes clear: he was cold, controlling and condescending; he preyed on female college students and belittled his wife. It's obvious why Vesta would want to escape him and find some independence, though we also learn that Vesta, while a victim, is not a hero. She herself is condescending, particularly to the other residents of Levant, and there's a sense that for a long time she bemoaned her vacant life without trying to alter it. By moving to Levant she's made a large outer change, but she's not "living the dream." She's eating cold, grocery story bagels each morning and fiddling the day away with her dog. 

As the novel continues, Vesta's derangement is clear, but it's not quite clear where the derangement is going. There's something engaging of the paradox of a mystery without an actual mystery, but eventually, after pages of Vesta inventing Magda's life and increasingly bizarre encounters with actual (maybe?) people, there's an expectation of some sort of meaning in the end.

Instead, Vesta just seems crazy. The final scene--involving a showdown with her previously loyal dog--is pretty fantastic, and I wanted to laugh as Vesta improbably leapt into the wilderness in her black camouflage suit, but I also wanted it to amount to something. "Crazy old lady" doesn't seem sufficient.