With very little to go on, she invents a list of murder suspects and possible motives for the crime. She is new to this area, alone after the death of her husband, and she knows no one.īecoming obsessed with solving this mystery, our narrator imagines who Magda was and how she met her fate. Our narrator is deeply shaken she has no idea what to make of this. Here is her dead body."īut there is no dead body. While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. Thanks.From one of our most ceaselessly provocative literary talents, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds an ominous note on a walk in the woods. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Is any of this real? Has Vesta dreamed all of this? Has she even fabricated Walter? What about her dog Charlie? Does he exist? At what point do you come to think that Ottessa Moshfegh is writing a novel within a novel. Vest recalls how Walter playing chess with himself-that by switching chairs, as he told her, "the psyche confronts itself.” He goes on: "The mind must be spoken to, Vesta, otherwise it starts to atrophy.” Vesta doesn't buy it: "But if the mind talks to itself … isn’t it just saying what it wants to hear?” Is Vesta suggesting that our attempts to understand our own lives and selves are simply efforts in delusion or illusion? Does this rule apply to Vesta herself?Ħ. Talk about Vesta's marriage to her late husband, Walter Gul. What do we come to learn about Vesta as she begins to determine the plot and characters of her "murder mystery"? Is she writing a mystery… or living within one?Ĥ. How does Vesta come up with "Blake," the supposed identity of the supposed murderer? Does she use random association, research, logic, imagination? Is the author poking fun at mystery novels?ģ. When Vesta Gul finds the note about a murder that kicks this narrative off, why doesn't she call the police? What would you have done?Ģ. We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for DEATH IN HER HANDS … then take off on your own:ġ.
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