294 pages
English language
Published Jan. 4, 2017 by Penguin Press.
Features stories, in which the flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful, but beauty comes from strange sources. In this book, the author shows us uncomfortable things, and makes us look at them forensically - until we find, suddenly, that we are really looking at ourselves.
Some of these stories are really good - but I really wish there had been less grossness. It felt like it was meant to shock, but then it happened in almost every story. Less would have been more here.
These got better as the range of perversion and trashy life increased, but nothing outstanding beyond making you confront the discomforting.
Homesick for another world is an extraordinary book of short stories that skilfully balances sympathy and disgust. The main characters, the narrators of the stories, feel that they don’t belong in this world. They are not exactly trapped or miserable, they are misfits in one form or another, lost with the world, but in truth lost with themselves.
Otessa Moshfegh’s stories are full of ugly, sad, grotesque moments. At the same time, there are also sweet moments; in a way, these are the weirdest moments in the book.
The characters, narrators of the stories, are remorseful, self-loathing, even disgusting. They seem angry, but in fact this anger is misdirected hopelessness – hopelessness at ever finding the beauty or the happiness that should exist in the world.
What they really want, is to be happy, but they don’t really know how to pursue their own happiness. Therefore, they look for a …
Homesick for another world is an extraordinary book of short stories that skilfully balances sympathy and disgust. The main characters, the narrators of the stories, feel that they don’t belong in this world. They are not exactly trapped or miserable, they are misfits in one form or another, lost with the world, but in truth lost with themselves.
Otessa Moshfegh’s stories are full of ugly, sad, grotesque moments. At the same time, there are also sweet moments; in a way, these are the weirdest moments in the book.
The characters, narrators of the stories, are remorseful, self-loathing, even disgusting. They seem angry, but in fact this anger is misdirected hopelessness – hopelessness at ever finding the beauty or the happiness that should exist in the world.
What they really want, is to be happy, but they don’t really know how to pursue their own happiness. Therefore, they look for a place to hide, desperately they seek for another world. But can you ever be truly happy in this or another world?
Otessa Moshfegh is a deeply talented writer. Her writing is impassioned, flawless, melancholic, but also funny. She looks like an indifferent observer, calmly she watches her mysterious characters, waiting them to make their next move, to hear their next dark thought.
