In her short story collection Homesick for Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh invites readers into a universe populated by characters who are profoundly alienated – not just from society, but from their own bodies and minds. Published after her acclaimed novel Eileen, this collection cements Moshfegh’s reputation as one of contemporary literature’s most exciting and disquieting voices. Through fourteen meticulously crafted stories, she creates a tapestry of human dysfunction that is both repellent and mesmerizing.
Uncomfortable Truths in Uncommon Prose
Moshfegh’s prose is deceptively straightforward, even conversational, but carries the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. Her characters speak and think in ways that most authors wouldn’t dare to put on the page – revealing the unseemly thoughts we all have but rarely acknowledge. Whether it’s the teacher in “Bettering Myself” who drinks herself into oblivion while fraud-grading her students’ exams, or the desperate Mr. Wu in the eponymous story who becomes infatuated with an arcade worker, Moshfegh portrays people at their most nakedly pathetic.
What distinguishes this collection is Moshfegh’s refusal to either completely condemn or redeem her characters. Instead, she presents them in full, unflattering light, allowing readers to recognize aspects of themselves in even the most repulsive scenarios. The result is a reading experience that oscillates between discomfort, recognition, and a strange form of catharsis.
The Unifying Threads
While each story stands alone as a complete work, several threads bind the collection:
Physical Disgust and Bodily Preoccupation Characters throughout the collection are fixated on bodily functions, imperfections, and the general grossness of having a physical form. From the surrogate vice president with her “abnormally swollen genitals” to the teacher who routinely vomits in the nuns’ bathroom, Moshfegh’s protagonists experience their bodies as alien and often repulsive. This physicality serves as a constant reminder of their entrapment in the material world.
The Quest for Transcendence Nearly every character in Homesick for Another World is searching for escape from their current reality. This takes various forms:
- Chemical alteration through drugs and alcohol
- Sexual encounters that promise but never deliver true connection
- Fantasies of different lives or different worlds
- Obsession with other people who seem to hold the key to happiness
In “A Better Place,” this theme becomes literal as a young girl believes killing the right person will open a portal back to her true home. This story, placed strategically at the end of the collection, provides a metaphorical key to the entire work – all of Moshfegh’s characters are homesick for somewhere that isn’t here, driven by the belief that they belong elsewhere.
Delusions and Self-Deception Moshfegh excels at depicting characters who are trapped in webs of their own making. In “Slumming,” an alcoholic teacher convinces herself she’s merely “dabbling” in the hard drugs she buys from locals in a rundown town. The protagonist of “Dancing in the Moonlight” deludes himself into believing a furniture seller is his soulmate based on a brief interaction. These self-deceptions aren’t played for comedy (though they often are darkly funny) but rather illuminate how people construct narratives that allow them to survive their own disappointments.
Standout Stories
While the collection maintains a consistently high quality, several stories deserve special mention:
- “The Beach Boy” follows a married doctor whose wife dies suddenly after they return from a tropical vacation. This story showcases Moshfegh’s ability to seamlessly blend the mundane with the existential. As the protagonist discovers his wife’s possible secret interest in male prostitutes, he embarks on his own journey of self-discovery that ends in an ambiguous transformation.
- “Bettering Myself” introduces a self-destructive Catholic school teacher who drinks, takes drugs, and falsifies her students’ standardized test results. Her first-person narration is mordantly funny, revealing a woman who sees through social pretenses while being unable to escape her own destructive patterns.
- “Mr. Wu” presents a man who stalks a woman working at a video game arcade, ultimately sabotaging his only chance at connection through his own obsessive, warped perception of romance. The story’s quiet devastation comes from how clearly we see Mr. Wu’s loneliness and how impossibly far he is from addressing it in a healthy way.
- “An Honest Woman” features an older man attempting to seduce his younger female neighbor through manipulation and deceit. The power dynamics shift throughout the story in unexpected ways, creating an uncomfortable tension that never fully resolves.
Moshfegh’s Distinct Literary Voice
Four elements distinguish Moshfegh’s voice in this collection:
- Unflinching physicality: Moshfegh describes bodily functions and physical discomfort with a bluntness that feels transgressive in literary fiction. Her characters vomit, masturbate, smell bad, pick at scabs, and obsess over their physical imperfections. This insistence on the body forces readers to confront the aspects of existence we’re socialized to ignore.
- Dark humor: Even in the bleakest moments, Moshfegh finds comedy in human absurdity. This isn’t the warm humor of reconciliation but the bitter laugh of recognition.
- Narrative restraint: Despite the often extreme behaviors of her characters, Moshfegh’s prose remains controlled and precise. She rarely explains or psychologizes, instead allowing actions and thoughts to reveal their own meanings.
- Compassion without sentimentality: Perhaps most remarkably, Moshfegh manages to create empathy for deeply flawed characters without ever excusing their behavior or manufacturing artificial redemption.
Criticisms and Limitations
While Homesick for Another World represents an impressive artistic achievement, it does have limitations:
- The collection’s relentless focus on alienation and desperation creates a somewhat monotonous emotional landscape. A few stories featuring different tonal registers might have created a more varied reading experience.
- Some readers may find the graphic bodily descriptions and focus on unhealthy obsessions too unpleasant to engage with meaningfully.
- Moshfegh occasionally relies on similar character types across multiple stories – particularly self-destructive, substance-abusing women and sexually dysfunctional men – which can feel repetitive by the collection’s end.
- The stories that venture slightly away from realism (“A Better Place” and “The Surrogate”) sometimes struggle to maintain the same psychological precision as the more straightforwardly realistic pieces.
Literary Context and Significance
Moshfegh’s work exists in conversation with other writers who explore the darker aspects of human psychology and social alienation. Her unflinching gaze recalls Flannery O’Connor, while her interest in bodily disgust and sexual dysfunction brings to mind Philip Roth. The flat affect of her prose style sometimes suggests Raymond Carver, though her psychological insights are often more explicit.
What sets Moshfegh apart is her distinctly contemporary sensibility. She understands how modern life – with its technological mediation, consumer culture, and pharmaceutical solutions – creates new forms of alienation while failing to address ancient human loneliness. Her characters exist in recognizable American settings (Los Angeles apartment complexes, New York City rental properties, small-town New England), but feel disconnected from any genuine community or tradition.
Conclusion: Homesickness Without a Home
What makes Homesick for Another World so powerful is not just Moshfegh’s technical skill or her willingness to venture into uncomfortable psychological territory, but her understanding of a particular form of contemporary suffering: the sense of not belonging anywhere. Her characters aren’t just homesick for another place; they’re homesick for a home they’ve never known and cannot identify.
The collection raises unsettling questions: What if our dissatisfaction isn’t something to be solved but an inherent condition of consciousness? What if the “something better” we all long for doesn’t exist? What would it mean to accept our embodied, imperfect existence rather than constantly yearning for transcendence?
Moshfegh doesn’t offer easy answers, but in articulating these questions so vividly, she creates a paradoxical comfort. For readers who recognize themselves in these flawed, striving characters, there’s profound relief in seeing their private thoughts and fears articulated with such precision and without judgment.
Homesick for Another World isn’t always enjoyable in a conventional sense, but it’s consistently illuminating, occasionally funny, and utterly unique. For readers willing to confront uncomfortable truths about human nature, it offers a bracing literary experience that lingers long after the final page.