Ottessa Moshfegh has to be one of my favorite writers that I discovered in 2018; My Year of Rest and Relaxation both thrilled and unsettled me, and after I finished that I proceeded to devour her debut novel Eileen. So it was with optimism that I approached her short story collection Homesick for Another World - I was looking forward to more delightfully awful antiheroines and sardonic humor and a heightened awareness of the mundane. Be careful what you wish for, I guess?What made Eileen's titul...

2.5unfortunately, this didn’t really work for me. at first i wasn’t sure if that’s because i’m not the biggest fan of short story collections anyway, or if it was because i had already read her 2 most popular books before this - but now i think it’s a mix of both. for me, this collection falls a bit flat compared to eileen and my year of rest and relaxation, and i think this is because moshfegh’s talent really shines in full length novels where she has the room to write the kind of rich, in-de...

How can anybody find the hubris to write short stories knowing that Ottessa Moshfegh's are a thousand times smarter, more transgressive, more alive, and more fun to read than yours? Even the "worst" story in this collection has a bloody, erratically-beating heart that makes all other works of contemporary short fiction look pasty and feeble. The best stories in this collection reassure me that fiction still has the power to be simultaneously relevant and transcendent, ruthless and tender, hilari...

The good stories in this collection are brilliant. I am quite a fan of this writer. So many mordant observations of contemporary life. Lots of resignation in the characters and people who see the world without sentimentality. A bizarre and increasingly annoying preoccupation with fat and detailed descriptions of fatness. Like nearly every story someone is fat. Which is also reality. It just seems to be a specific preoccupation that became noticeable to the point of distraction. And it's fine. Ju...

Otessa Moshfegh had me with her Booker nominated Eileen. While the book was really creepy, Moshfegh pulled off quite a feat in creating such a relentlessly but complex unsavoury protagonist. That talent didn't play out as well for me in this short story collection. There were a few stories I really liked, but overall, as a collection, the stories started to feel like too much of the same flavour. Moshfegh is extremely talented at depicting flawed disturbed characters, and she certainly doesn't s...

creepy little gross weirdos with god complexes 💘

So, I know that Moshfegh's writing is not going to be for everyone, but DAMN does this lady know how to put together a short story collection. Many of the review quotes on my copy of the book describe physical bodily harm (mild electrocution and blowtorch scorching) as a comparator for reading Moshfegh's writing. It is an odd thing to slap on a cover and expect it to sell copies, but it is oddly appropriate here. These stories pulled me in and then attacked without warning with grotesque imagery...

i hope ottessa moshfegh has a really great therapist

These short stories have all the grit of Moshfegh’s novels, but these snippets only make her repetitive darkness purposeless. Rounded up from 2.5.

Nobody wants a sloppy drunk teaching their kids, but freako little writer Ottessa Moshfegh managed to make me love a teacher like that in no time. A depressed, hard-drinking Catholic school teacher has a little stab of hope splinter into her world one day, and I had to cheer her on. Does she come to school hung over and nauseated on a regular basis? Yup. But I mostly forgave her. That's what author Moshfegh will do to you.I loved this little anecdote, plunked into the teacher's tale. While the s...

THERE’S NOTHING QUITE LIKE ITThis book seems to have a bit of a food obsession. I watched the waitresses move around gingerly with their round black trays of coloured cocktails and small plates of bread and bowls of olives p11Food, glorious food!Hot sausage and mustard!While we're in the mood --Cold jelly and custard! He ate a soup made of mutton and spicy peppers. He shovelled the rice into his mouth like a peasant, let it fall all over his lap and onto the floor p31Peas pudding and saveloysWha...

This is one of the rare cases where I prefer a writer's short stories to her full-length novel. As much as I enjoyed Eileen (Moshfegh's 2015 novel), I thought that the actual plot paled in comparison to her superb character development and grim, nasty prose.Homesick for Another World gives Moshfegh the opportunity to make her characters the true focal point, without the expectation of a long, cohesive plot. It's like reading about a dozen Eileens in small doses.Moshfegh's characters are isolated...

2.5/5.If I had to describe this collection in one sentence, it would be: Weird people thinking and doing very weird shit.Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of my favourite books I read last year, and while I think her short story collection goes in a similar direction, it didn’t do what Eileen did nearly as well. Ottessa Moshfegh definitely has a knack for dwelling in the murky, grotesque corners of life and I think there’s a lot of value in putting characters (especially, female char...

my becoming-a-genius project, part 11!for those of you who are somehow still here and equally unbelievably have not yet been cursed by seeing this project over and over in your feeds:i have decided to become a genius.to accomplish this, i'm going to work my way through the collected stories of various authors, reading + reviewing 1 story every day until i get bored / lose every single follower / am struck down by a vengeful deity.i feel very called out by this title and very ready for two weeks'...

And anyway, there is no comfort here on Earth. There is pretending, there are words, but there is no peace. Nothing is good here. Nothing. Every place you go on Earth, there is more nonsense. Trying to make sense of that nonsense in Ottessa Moshfegh's debut collection Homesick for Another World would be futile—as futile as the lives of many, if not all, of the characters in her stories. Things aren't pretty or comforting in this collection, but neither is life. And the delusion with which peo

14 glimpses down dark alleys, Moshfegh-style Booker nominated Eileen knocked me on my ass (in a good way) last year - earning my favourite read of 2016. I was so enamoured with the no-mercy-for-you way Ottessa Moshfegh writes. When I saw she had a collection of short stories I was chomping at the bit to get at em, despite the early mixed reviews that I was reading on Goodreads. I wasn't all that surprised to see that the reviews were mixed; the same is true for Eileen, and I can understand wh

Quite frankly these were way more explicit than I was expecting. They may have been well written but I found many of these just plain disgusting and to what end? Let's just say I am not the right reader for these, I finished story two and three, feeling grody, nasty. Not why I read. To ne fair, there were a few stories I did like better and you may not have the same objections I have, so read them for yourselves and see.ARC from Netgalley.

What a wild ride! Moshfegh's collection contains 14 short stories, all of them glimpses into the lives of alienated characters - which is why the title is fitting. We meet men and women of different backgrounds and ages, all of them apparently feeling different kinds of emptiness, which they try to escape through daydreams, drugs or whatever else might distract them, including cruelty. In fact, there is plenty of psychological cruelty in these texts. And Moshfegh is bold and effective when it c...

Another book that has been sitting on the to-read shelf for ages. My only previous experience of Moshfegh was her novel Eileen, which was shortlisted for the 2016 Booker prize and certainly divided opinion with its bleak situation and unsympathetic characters.This collection of short stories also visits some pretty dark places. The stories are told in the first person by a number of narrators who might naturally be seen as life's losers, who are unafraid to discuss unsavoury subjects. This actua...

If you thought the eponymous antiheroine of Ottessa Moshfegh's Eileen was downtrodden, depraved and desperate... well, let's just say you ain't seen nothing yet.The characters in Moshfegh's short stories are wretched and invariably lonely, even (perhaps especially) when they are not alone. They haunt shabby apartments and dirty restaurants. They're ugly on either the inside or outside, or both. If they have a job, they probably hate it. If they have a partner, they probably hate them. If the...