Ottessa Moshfegh's “Death In Her Hands” isn't exactly a murder mystery, conventional or otherwise. It’s more of portrait of a woman gradually losing her mind, using the mystery to hang on.
If the unraveling Vesta experiences were limited to making up a mystery story, well, we might be able to think of her as an aging Harriet the Spy, cooking up drama to sustain her lonely existence through a New England winter. The key word, however, is"lonely." The more Vesta indulges her mystery fantasies, the more we see how isolated she has become from the rest of the world, from her own past, and from herself.
Vesta's quick departure from her married home to this lakeside hovel might be evidence enough of her reaction to long trauma. Is her even quicker descent into irrationality evidence of that trauma, too, or is there dementia involved? Wisely, Moshfegh doesn't diagnose; she simply shows. Strange things begin to happen, from the destruction of Vesta's vegetable garden to the death of Charlie. The few people with whom Vesta does engage seem, through her eyes, malevolent and watchful.
This is not a murder mystery, conventional or otherwise. This is a portrait of a person losing her mind, from inside her mind, while she tries to keep it, using a pretend murder mystery. It's also a portrait of how a person can become so cut off and beyond help in our modern, increasingly connected culture, how, if some people can remain in contact 24/7 via text and chat, others can lose contact for days, weeks, months at a time.
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