Death In Her Hands: Ottessa Moshfegh - Tapa blanda

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen, a novel of haunting metaphysical suspense

While on her daily walk with her dog in the nearby woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with stones. Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body.

Shaky even on her best days, she is also alone, and new to this area, having moved here from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and now deeply alarmed. Her brooding about the note grows quickly into a full-blown obsession, as she explores multiple theories about who Magda was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But is there either a more innocent explanation for all this, or a much more sinister one – one that strikes closer to home?

In this triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, we must decide whether the stories we tell ourselves guide us closer to the truth or keep us further from it.

Ottessa Moshfegh has written four previous books: McGlue (2014), Eileen, which was awarded the 2016 Pen/Hemingway Award and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Homesick for Another World (2017), and My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), which was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize and will be filmed by Yorgos Lanthimos, the Oscar-winning director of The Favourite.