''Death in Her Hands'' is a 2020 novel by

Ottessa Moshfegh Ottessa Charlotte Moshfegh (; born May 20, 1981) is an American author and novelist. Her debut novel, ''Eileen'' (2015), won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a fiction finalist for the National Boo ...

Synopsis

Vesta Gul, a 72-year-old widow, is walking her dog in the woods and finds a note that reads: "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." However, no body is in sight. Vesta becomes obsessed with discovering who Magda was and the circumstances surrounding her death.

Background

''Death in Her Hands'' was originally scheduled to be published by

Penguin Press Penguin Group is a British trade book publisher and part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. The new company was created by a merger that was finalised on 1 July 2013, with Bertelsmann initial ...

on April 21, 2020, but was postponed due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

. The novel was ultimately published by Penguin Press on June 23, 2020.

Reception

At the

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website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the novel received a cumulative "Positive" rating based on 35 reviews: 7 "Rave" reviews, 19 "Positive" reviews, 8 "Mixed" reviews, and 1 "Pan" review. In its

starred review A starred review is a book review __NOTOC__ A book review is a form of literary criticism in which a book is merely described (summary review) or analyzed based on content, style, and merit. A book review may be a primary source, opinion piece ...

, ''

Kirkus Reviews ''Kirkus Reviews'' (or ''Kirkus Media'') is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus (1893–1980). The magazine is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fic ...

'' called it an "eerie and affecting satire of the detective novel." In a mixed review, ''

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of B ...

'' criticized the novel's narrative as being overly unreliable and wrote that the novel "lacks the devious, provocative fun of Moshfegh's other work".

References

2020 American novels Novels by Ottessa Moshfegh Penguin Press books Psychological novels American detective novels American mystery novels American thriller novels Fiction with unreliable narrators First-person narrative novels {{2020s-thriller-novel-stub