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Homesick for Another World: Stories
Homesick for Another World: Stories
Homesick for Another World: Stories
Audiobook8 hours

Homesick for Another World: Stories

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

An electrifying first collection from one of the most exciting short story writers of our time "What distinguishes Ottessa Moshfegh's writing is that unnamable quality that makes a new writer's voice, against all odds and the deadening surround of lyrical postures, sound unique." -Jeffrey Eugenides, in judges' citation for The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel Eileen was one of the literary events of 2015. Garlanded with critical acclaim, it was named a book of the year by The Washington Post and the San Francisco Chronicle, selected as a BEA Buzz pick, and nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. But as many critics noted, Moshfegh is particularly held in awe for her short stories. Homesick for Another World is the rare case where an author's short story collection is if anything more anticipated than her novel. And for good reason. There's something eerily unsettling about Ottessa Moshfegh's stories, something almost dangerous, while also being delightful, and even laugh-out-loud funny. Her characters are all unsteady on their feet in one way or another; they all yearn for connection and betterment, though each in very different ways, but they are often tripped up by their own baser impulses and existential insecurities. Homesick for Another World is a master class in the varieties of self-deception across the gamut of individuals representing the human condition. But part of the unique quality of her voice, the Moshfeghian experience, is the way the grotesque and the outrageous are infused with tenderness and compassion. Moshfegh is our Flannery O'Connor, and Homesick for Another World is her Everything That Rises Must Converge or A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The flesh is weak; the timber is crooked; people are cruel to each other, and stupid, and hurtful. But beauty comes from strange sources. And the dark energy surging through these stories is powerfully invigorating. We're in the hands of an author with a big mind, a big heart, blazing chops, and a political acuity that is needle-sharp. The needle hits the vein before we even feel the prick.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 17, 2017
ISBN9781501938511
Homesick for Another World: Stories

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Reviews for Homesick for Another World

Rating: 3.6830709645669293 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Reminiscent of charles bukowski. Beautiful and strange, one comes to know a variety of darkly real characters.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Outstanding writing and audiobook reading
    Every story is different, places people perspectives.
    Moshfegh’s imagination and control over her craft is unparalleled.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I did not anticipate how much this book would affect me. I often felt sad and uncomfy after several chapters. Towards the last 4 chapters, I almost decided to not finish it but I'm glad I did. It's unsettling to think that there are real people living and thinking like some of the characters in the book. And it made me question, “am I good person or do I have some distorted perception that has convinced me that I'm a good person ?”.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    i did not care. i sat down today and told myself that i'd finish the last 200 pages today and honestly? i did not even like one story, the last one was okay but the rest were honestly such bores
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Wishing to Be Somebody Else

    Let’s face it. Nobody can be happy with their life, and even life in general, every minute of every day. You have permission to be unhappy, to have periods of melancholia. Wish you were somewhere else, or somebody else when you fall into a funk. Nothing wrong or unhealthy with any of this. But, divorce yourself from the present, obsess on what might have been, what your life really should be as opposed to what it is, carry it to the most extreme conclusion, as the characters in the final story, “A Better Place,” in Moshfegh’s collection do, and my friend, you have a serious problem. You might be a candidate for this collection of stories about dissatisfied people yearning for another world, a world, unfortunately, that doesn’t exist. If you consider yourself among the normal, you might find peeking into these fourteen lives and situations interesting. For, really, how weird can people be? Mighty weird in Moshfegh’s imagination.

    The writing here can be riveting. The descriptions of ugliness and ugly features prove as fascinating as they are off putting. And as individual stories taken one or two at a time over time, they certainly can be intriguing and thoughtful. However, when gathered into a collection, they suffer from a sameness and dreariness, all sounding like the other, losing the uniqueness they probably did have when presented individually in the various publications in which they appeared previously. So, to enhance your enjoyment, or maybe to yank any pleasure from these stories, you might do best to read them at a pace of one or two a week. And prepare yourself to face up to not so much the dark side of life but its disappointment reduced down into a bunch of bitter drops, not so much seasoning, more like poison against the human spirit.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It's pushing it to give it two stars, but I did listen to the end of the well-read audiobook. But while the stories vary, and while some have some good insight into human nature, they are also usually fairly pointless. A lot of observations or first person narrators with drug, physical, or other problems. Listening to a bunch of short stories back-to-back is a sure way to reveal a writer's weaknesses--unless he or she is a very good writer indeed, and I'm afraid Moshfegh isn't. Too much of an obsession with armpits and pimples! And not a good enough writer to actually write endings to most of her stories, which is in a way good, since they tend to be too long already. NOT recommended.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The fourteen stories in this collection are challenging. They may also be very good, though sometimes the challenges they present may confound even the heartiest desire to admire them. Liking them would be a stretch, but perhaps Moshfegh is sanguine about the fact that her fiction will require a bit of a stretch.The stories are peopled with marginal characters, flawed in both obvious and subtle ways. They are rarely self-aware. And although life seems, to them, to merely happen, for the reader events are more often seen as a consequence of the character’s action or inaction. Some of the protagonists are, apparently, merely waiting, as though in holding mode. What exactly they are waiting for is less clear, especially since they themselves have such odd misapprehensions of the world around them that their stated aims are less than reliable.Moshfegh is unafraid of taking on identities far from her own, be that in gender, time, or ethnicity. Surprisingly, even though a reader might not conclude that she loves her own creations, she does show them the respect of spending time with them, in their lives and in their minds, however uncomfortable that might be. And she invites us to join her there. I’m just wary, or at least uncertain, of what I might be gaining from such an experience.There is a great deal of anxiety, sadness, ill feeling, and self-loathing in these stories. And not a lot of joy or humour. Which is a bit disappointing because, on the evidence of her novels, it’s clear that Moshfegh is entirely capable of embracing the absurd and the ridiculous. Does she withhold these aspects of life because of the short story form? I wonder.Gently recommended.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I came into this short story collection from another, Karen Russell’s Orange World and Other Stories. Maybe like being a comedian who never wants to go on stage right after another comedian has rocked the house, experiencing Homesick for Another World right then wasn’t fair or “objective” enough. If a previous collection has wowed you from the first story to the last, starting up another author’s stories will take a little time to adjust to. Your mind knows they’re different, but you haven’t quite clued into this new style, you haven’t found your reading legs yet. Just a few stories later, I had found my Moshfegh legs and had quickly learned to love them. My reading choices come from the large stacks of books that surround me, as well as the recent arrivals on my doorstep. Within two weeks, I found myself reading these two short story collections, as well as Aime Barrodale’s You Are Having a Good Time, and Sorry for Your Trouble by a longtime favorite, Richard Ford. I was awash in the shorter form and loving it. Ottessa Moshfegh is mostly known for her fascinating novels; Death in Her Hands, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Eileen, and McGlue; but this collection shows how fertile her writer’s mind truly is. If you want stories that are always original, probing, and well-built, Homesick for Another World is a perfect world for you. Moshfegh’s work roams the planet and is as varied as her birthright, being the daughter of a Croatian mother and an Iranian father. Her characters are rich in flaws (Can you say weirdos and creeps?), sometimes positively pathetic, but you won’t be able to take your mind’s eye off them. Owing to the title, there’s expectedly a feeling of homesickness and a certain level of despair that lives in many of the stories, along with a lot of humor. I try not to mention blurbs and reviews, but I just loved this cluster of words from the New York Times review, “Dark, confident, prickling stories.” Those words drew me in and I love to be surrounded by this writer’s pure originality, never knowing where she might take me next.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Much like Eileen, her Booker prize-shortlisted novel, Ottessa Moshfegh’s stories revel in and celebrate everything that is detestable, squalid, rank, and filthy in human existence. These are stories about people misled by desire, whose moral compass has long since malfunctioned, whose disfigurements are more than skin deep, whose weirdness does not raise eyebrows because it’s just standard operating procedure in the bizarre, morally lax world where they reside. These are people who are in all probability destined for lives of solitary misery and self-abuse. But it would be reductive to state that Moshfegh’s characters, men and women alike, have chosen self-loathing and self-destruction over some happier, healthier alternative. Moshfegh never shows us a character actually choosing self-harm or immoderate drinking or casual drug use or some other self-destructive behaviour. When we meet them, these behaviours are already ingrained and habitual. The sordid and desolate fate that awaits them is already a foregone conclusion: not only are they immune to redemption and recovery, but even a tentative step in that direction, even a smidgen of self-improvement, is never really considered as a viable or even desirable option. Many of Moshfegh’s characters simply want to be left alone so they can get back to their boozing and self-medicating in order to make their lives tolerable. Such as the self-loathing Miss Mooney, in the ironically titled “Bettering Myself,” an alcoholic teacher in a Catholic school who falsifies her students’ exam results and sleeps on her desk. Other characters are hilariously self-deluded, such as the emotionally reticent Mr. Wu in the eponymous story, who has fallen hopelessly and ridiculously in love with the woman who works the front desk at the video arcade. But Mr. Wu, who regularly engages in kinky sex with prostitutes, finds many aspects of human intimacy disgusting and ultimately lacks the courage to declare his love and risk rejection. In “Slumming,” another teacher-narrator owns a summer house in the ramshackle town of Alna, where poverty and boredom are endemic, but where “The cost of living was a joke,” making it possible for her to live as if she’s rich. Her needs are simple: cheap drugs and dime-store junk. This description probably makes it obvious that the stories in Homesick for Another World are not for all tastes. Moshfegh’s characters are indifferent to just about everything, including their health and well-being and what happens to themselves and those around them. Again and again she shocks us with explicit descriptions of human stupidity, cruelty, sexuality, excretions and deformities. You will not find happiness in these pages. What you will find is people exploiting one another and feeding off each other’s weakness, seeking gratification by any means at hand. Be warned that when you open this book you enter a dimly lit, malodorous underworld of human degradation. However, the payoff is enormous. These are frightening, uninhibited works of fiction. They are perverse, brazenly grotesque and deeply disturbing. But they are also darkly comical, tirelessly inventive and endlessly entertaining.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Homesick For Another Worldby Ottessa Moshfegh20175.0 / 5.0 Wow! Moshfegh hits the ball out of the park with this one. I think the ball is still in flight. The powerful, twisted and dark focus of the 14 stories in this collection will make you uncomfortable. They will trouble you. They will make you consider, and think and wonder. They will make you grow. That is why I love Moshfegh's writing so much. She can capture the dark, twisted underside of things and make them so personal and poignant. She shines the light, so we might see.Moshfegh has captured the ambivalence of our times, and with it, the decay of empathy and morals in thought provoking and interesting ways that make you consider the characters as individuals, as well as their choices.One story, 'No Place For Good People', is a good example of this, and a story I can not get out of my mind. It says so much about society at large in the world today. Peoples moral ambivalence and their sense of alienation, the inability to connect to people who are different. The story is about an adult man, who is mentally challenged, being cared for by his brother. It is the adult males birthday and he wants to go to Hooters for his dinner. The reactions, interactions and comments between them, before, during and after dinner are unforgettable. In this story, Moshfegh has summed up what is happening to our society, how our mindset, as people, is evolving. And shows us the results of those changes. The story 'A Dark and Winding Road' ,also, is a story within a story that will make you ponder and wonder, and open your mind in new ways about already conceived opinions. I highly recommend this collection. It is dark, and troubling, and some of the topics may seem somewhat vulgar, but it successfully will make you consider and re-consider how we experience the world and the people around us. It will make you think and consider, and that is exactly what a story should do.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    “She was probably my age, but she looked like a woman with a hundred years of suffering behind her-no love, no transformations, no joy, just junk food and bad television, ugly, mean-spirited men creaking in and out of stuffy rooms to take advantage of her womb and impassive heft. One of these obese offspring would soon overtake her throne...”It will be no surprise, to my fellow book lovers, that I love dark and edgy stories. Well, this collection of stories delivers that in spades. Moshfegh seems to strongly identify with the squalid lives of misfits and outcasts. These troubled and slightly twisted characters are her “peeps”. It also helps she is a good writer, with a sharp, acute mind. Obviously, this is not for all tastes, but if you are willing to get your hands dirty a bit, give this collection a try.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    1.75

    Every story is rinse repeat parade of different narratives with the exact same feel and premise. Some individual in a nondescript time between the late 90's and early oughts can't find themselves. They are quirky oddballs who are usually non ambitious, sad and emotionally immature and barely live life until they peak in disaster. Each story shows a clear disdain for anyone overweight or too poor, as if they are the biggest evil the world has to offer. (I have no idea what Moshfig has against the overweight or poor, but they seem to be the running joke in ever piece she writes.) The biggest joy in her characters lives is succumbing to a worse fate than the life they are living. Everyone in Moshfigs stories seems to relish disaster.

    Her writing has some allure, and while three stories seemed to stand out above the others by injecting a hint of variety, (No Place for Good People, A Better Place & The Beach Boy), and while I don't shy from a story that is created to make a reader comfortably uncomfortable in an attempt to humanize the strange or normally off-putting members of society, it gets boring after a while when it's your only Schtick. The only difference between these short stories and her book Eileen (which I quiet enjoyed) is page length and the devils details. It is beginning to feel like if you read one Moshfig, you have read them all. Im disappointed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    patches of genius and voice, voice, voice! confidence! brio!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "It was disgusting -- just as I'd always hoped it would be."Very dark. Very funny. Very good.Her novel EILEEN didn't quite work for me. I appreciated what she was trying to do, but I couldn't really connect with her narrator and her voice. But with this book, it definitely clicked. These stories are savage, raw, disconcerting, and hilarious -- yet also oddly affecting at times. Sort of like Ray Carver crossed with Donald Ray Pollock and filmed by the Coen brothers (or something).Some of the stories are surreal, and some are perhaps a bit *too* real. (Those who've read Moshfegh will probably know what I mean.) Her fantastical stories work less well for me. I think she's at her best when she's more grounded in her characters' everyday lives, grim and absurd as they may be: "I hated my boyfriend but I liked the neighborhood. . . . I liked how ugly it all was, how trashy."It's uneven, as most story collections are. But the high points are gems.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brilliant, Ms. Moshfegh is a Shirley Jackson for the 21st century.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Homesick For Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh’s collection of short stories, comprises a selection of her previously published pieces, culminating in a grand anthology that exemplifies Moshfegh’s work precisely. The published book helpfully gathers most of her published short stories together in one accessible volume (excluding only three: “Medicine”, Vice, December 1, 2007; “Disgust”, The Paris Review, No. 202, Fall 2012; and “Brom”, Granta, Issue 139, 2017). A Better Place is the only chapter that was written for the book itself. It stands alone as an ending to the book, but also as a new piece within itself.The author of the best-seller Eileen has a distinctly identifiable style:You know, I like weird characters. I don’t know any normal people [laughs]. I do like cliches in my satire: the hipster in the story dancing in the moonlight is a distillation of all the hipsters I knew when younger. I tend to be mean, huh? I’m really hard on men, especially older men.Moshfegh deliberately chooses to write about the dirtiest and grimiest of our human activities, describing things we all do, the dark things, and finds beauty in the fact that we all indeed have that same darkness within. These stories illuminate the dark truth of human nature, told raw and real, with a morbid sarcasm and dry wit.The stories are simple and relatable, drawing on settings and feelings that everyone has experienced. Influenced by what upsets her, Moshfegh depicts our normalized ‘bad-habit’ activities, such as going out clubbing or going to work drunk, and shows how these activities inspire some of the brightest revelations from the characters. Nights of drunk dancing in the club leaves the teacher in “Bettering Myself“ fully understanding that makeup covers up the self, only making people more fake and therefore more removed from the self.The overriding question was: Are we all totally alone, moving with a single consciousness stuck inside our brains and bodies, can we really connect and communicate? If it’s so hard to do that, do we really love each other? And is it possible to really accept love? A lot of the characters in the stories ask themselves that question, seeking out love or self-love in some way, usually preposterously. What’s curious is how isolated I really am, and, paradoxically, by writing about isolation I came out of isolation. I love my stories and I love myself at this point, but when I started I don’t think that was the case. -from An Interview with Ottessa MoshfeghDrawing on the external and internal blemishes of people is one of Moshfegh’s trademarks. Her fascination with the darker sides of the human experience leads her to explore the way our ugliness can bloom into something beautiful (and, vice versa, how beauty can be deceptively ugly) through her writing.There’s one earlier on called “A Dark and Winding Road” which is about a pseudo-intellectual Manhattanite on the brink of fatherhood and he goes on a trip to his family’s cabin in the woods to escape his wife who he believes is irrationally cruel to him. The reader gets a sense that this guy is in a panic over change and being asked to change. When there, he thinks a lot, smokes some weed, has some experiences, and a visitor drops by looking for his brother. The story, for me, becomes about someone feeling the hard way that we love people, like people in our family, who are essentially a different version of you. -from An Interview with Ottessa MoshfeghThough fictitious, these stories reflect the changes Moshfegh went through in order to find herself, and touches readers in a lot of ways that we can relate to. The stories are approachable and real.“A Better Place,” which is mostly from the perspective of a female twin child who tries to cope with the impossible decision of escaping a life she does not enjoy or staying in it to be with someone whom she feels affectionate. It’s somewhat sci-fi-esque, but in the end, it’s about deciding if you want to go elsewhere to be happy or stay safe perhaps with someone you love of your own blood. It’s how I felt when I decided to move to Los Angeles and, in turn, move away from some of the values I had been raised with. -from An Interview with Ottessa MoshfeghNina Corcoran recognizes that “Ottessa Moshfegh appeals to everyone, if only because she articulates life in a way everyone knows to be true but rarely gets the chance to read about in such mesmerizing.“ Deeply complex characters performing habitual routines allow readers to relate to the characters in a way that we don’t, normally — allowing us readers to own our darkness and see the beauty in our truth. This treasury of Moshfegh’s work demonstrates her use of short fiction as a tool for processing human emotion, sarcasm and dry wit as weapons against the harsh realities of the world.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Solid short stories. Well written. Interesting
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As with Eileen, every character seems to have a layer of grime coating their skin. A brilliantly creepy collection, although no single story stands out as unmissable reading.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Every story is revolting and gross, and the characters go through little or no development. Several stories feature detailed descriptions of bad breath, oily hair, pus, pimples, unrepentant bulimia, etc., but not in a good way. Was this published on a dare? Who won that bet?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I have to disagree with some of the other reviews' labels of the characters in this book. They may be unconventional, but that's the whole point. Moshfegh sums it all up in her final story of two children desperate to escape society and humanity, they're homesick for another world and they don't even know what that other world is like. Moshfegh's wonderful short stories challenge convention and what it all means. People by nature are twisted, selfish, odd, and complicated, and Moshfegh brings that right to you. I was recommended this book by my favorite author, David Sedaris, another expert of examining humanity's silly and petty ways. I loved this book as much as he did.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    To anyone who read Ottessa Moshfegh's excellent and distasteful noir, Eileen, her new collection of short stories follows much of the same ground, being full of creepy, repulsive and lonely people interacting with other repulsive characters. It rarely ends well. But a short story collection isn't the best platform for her writing. Most of the stories would do very well set apart from the others, but all together, they form an unrelenting repetition of misery that becomes less effective when read one after the other, although I did try to only read one story a day. In the form of a novel, an off-putting character creates an effective atmosphere of unpleasantness that is a great deal of fun to read. In a series of short stories, with each main character as creepy as the last, the effectiveness is reduced. That said, the story called Mr. Wu encapsulated Moshfegh's style perfectly. In it, a shy older man wonders how to approach a neighbor, a woman he has fallen in love with from afar. As he tries to work up the courage and to find the right approach, the reader slowly realizes how terrible it would be for this relationship to blossom.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    All of the characters in this collection of odd short stories range from pathetic to positively repellent. Almost none of their stories have any real resolution, never mind a good one. And Moshfegh's writing focuses so much on off-putting details that it makes not only the characters' lives but the universe in general feel tawdry and depressing. Which might make it sound like the stories are bad. They're not. They're really, really not. They're unpleasant. But they're far from bad. These are very well-written stories that do, I think, exactly what the author is trying to make them do. And having read through all of them, I think I feel about this book a milder version of what I felt after reading Han Kang's The Vegetarian: I appreciate the author's skill and the fact that this is good, effective writing that touches on something that feels meaningful... and I don't really ever want to read any more of it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A bizarre collection of short stories, each more unique than the one before. From alcoholic high school teachers to creepy old neighbors to alien children, Ottessa Moshfegh's collection of short stories will intrigue you with it's dark humor, perceptive look into the underbelly of humanity, and wonderfully developed flawed characters. Storytelling at it's finest.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In Homesick for Another World Otessa Moshfegh excels at writing about homely, unfortunate people who long for better lives, but never achieve them. It’s unexpected to me, as a reader, that I didn’t feel sympathy for these men and women. To paraphrase what a character in “Malibu” so succinctly says “they want what they deserve.” Surprisingly enough they’re not devastated when their meager dreams aren’t realized. Mr. Wu from the same-named story, “Mr. Wu,” Miss Mooney from “Bettering Myself,” Mark from “Dancing in the Moonlight,” to name a few, are good examples. Perhaps the most emotionally searing story in the collection for me was “Slumming.” I would recommend the book for this contribution alone. Whether it’s for a woman, a better job, or an alternative reality, these characters’ dreams and aspirations are uniquely presented when penned by Ms. Moshfegh. I highly recommend this collection.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    First the novel Eileen, and now the collection Homesick for Another World, Ottessa Moshfegh’s fiction cleanses your soul of attachments by salting your brain. These tales are for people who walk the tightrope just this side of sociopathy. These stories have a dark heartbeat--the one you feel pounding deep in your ears when you’re under pressure. And there is no more perfect story to end a collection called Homesick for Another World than “A Better Place.”