McGlue

A rotten showcase of the inner and outer turmoil of a sad, sad man, Moshfegh continues to be the best at writing the worst humanity has to offer. Set in the 1850s, McGlue is a “sailor” invited to work on his current vessel by what seems to be a man he met by chance and his only friend, Johnson, who he is accused of killing. The narrative shifts back and forth between the events leading up to the murder and the present day as McGlue is being apprehended and tried for the crime. Being told from the perspective of McGlue and with McGlue being a vicious alcoholic with severe brain damage, the narrative is hard to follow most of the time, but as the story progresses you learn more about the latent emotions that perhaps led to these unfortunate events.

Wrought with homophobia, homoeroticism, and blatant racism, this is a difficult book to recommend. Definitely look up trigger warnings. But with that being said, and please don’t hate me for this, in many ways I felt like this was a horrifying version of Giovanni’s Room given the complex relationship between the two main characters and their inability to confront their feelings. It was in those ways that I really enjoyed this. But the graphic, gory moments that Moshfegh is known for quickly pull you out of any introspective moment you might fall into. Did I like this book? Yes, I really did. Did I find it enjoyable? No, not at all. Falling somewhere between Lapvona and Eileen, if you enjoy Moshfegh’s darker works, you’ll find something to like here.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a tremendous literary talent. She is one of the most interesting contemporary American writers.

The first book of hers I read it was a book of short stories, titled Homesick for Another World which it blew me away. It was such an unusual narrative, an extraordinary, otherworldly book that skilfully balancing sympathy and disgust.

I was so excited by Moshfegh’s work that I just had to read more of her books. A couple of months ago I read her last book the wonderful and strange, almost surreal, My Year of Rest and Relaxation a book that operate, in a certain sense, between disgust and repellence.

Finally, a few days ago, I borrowed from the library McGlue, the first book that Ottessa Moshfegh had published in 2014. I read it all in one sitting and I will read again before I return my copy. It is an extraordinary novella, a sea-faring tale of love, dependency and murder. McGlue, a rather dysfunctional sailor has acquitted on account of murder, having murdered his friend and fellow sailor Johnson in the port of Zanzibar in the spring of 1851. He was sent to prison in Salem, Massachusetts, but the judge deemed him unfit to stand trial because he committed the murder in a state of blackout caused by heavy drinking and because of an accident that he had cracked his head.

I wanted to lie down with it and strangle it and kill it and save it and nurse it and kill it again and I wanted to go and forget my face and I wanted to drink and get my head ruined but I certainly hadn’t thought about making it. That wasn’t anything I’d ever sought out to do.

Through Moshfegh’s writing you can feel McGlue’s pain and the depth of his suffering from alcoholism. He is a man desperate for love, but he doesn’t know how to love and as it usually happens in tragic love stories, he destroys the thing that he loves most.

Reading McGlue feels like an intense and disturbing virtual reality experience, mostly because of Moshfegh’s unique writing, dark and intimate, beautiful and authentic.

McGlue is such an awfully impressive book. A contemporary classic.

Read the full review at Athena reads