Death in Her Hands

Book: Death in Her Hands
Author: Ottessa Moshfegh

While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body". Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to area, having moved her from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home.-Goodreads

Review: Vesta, a 72 year old widow, is walking in the woods when she finds a note on the ground. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me." She becomes obsessed with solving the mystery of Magda.

Moshfegh is undoubtedly a talented writer and can craft quite a tale. Was there an actual point to this book? If you ever had the design to jump into the inner thoughts of a crazy person, this may be the book for you. If you are looking for an actual plot with defined characters, this is not for you. As for me? It was okay, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I was interested enough in other people's interpretations of events that I searched around for awhile after finishing this, so that bumped my rating from 2 to 3 stars. 

Grade: 3/5