Winner of the inaugural Fence Modern Prize in ProseWinner of the Believer Book Award "A scion of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Raymond Carver at once, Moshfegh transforms a poison into an intoxicant."
–Rivka Galchen "Reads like the swashbuckled spray of a slit throat–immediate, visceral, frank, unforgiving, violent, and grotesquely beautiful . . .
McGlue has the urgency of short fiction married with the grandiosity of an epic at-sea classic."
–Los Angeles Review of Books "[Moshfegh] is a writer's writer, and one of the most multitalentednew voices to come along in years. . . . In
McGlue, Moshfegh's facility with voice (here she's inhabiting that of a nineteenth-century scoundrel) competes with her ability to expose the gritty, mucky corners of the human condition. . . . Her prose is breathtaking, inventive, and electric."
–Bustle "This book is not really a book; it's a prayer and a miracle. Ottessa Moshfegh is a conjurer of the highest order, and
McGlue, a short novel about a person named McGlue who might be a murderer, makes me feel in love with the world, and so grateful to be alive."
–Patty Yumi Contrell, author of Sorry to Disturb the Peace "A splashy new edition. . . . Moshfegh's first book introduces the kind of character, in all his psychological wildness and vivid grotesquerie that her others are known for, and readers will be more than intrigued." –
Booklist
"Moshfegh's fiction often fetishizes the repellent (vomit, blood, our capacity for callously using each other), but in time McGlue's tale acquires tenderness of a sort. That's partly thanks to Moshfegh's lyricism. . . . A potent, peculiar, and hallucinatory anti-romance."
–Kirkus Reviews