Death in Her Hands

Death in Her Hands (2020) is a work of psychological suspense and metafiction by American author Ottessa Moshfegh. Moshfegh is known for her novels featuring alienated and unreliable female narrators, including the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning Eileen (2015) and the New York Times bestseller My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018). Death in Her Hands was also a New York Times bestseller and was named a Best Book of 2020 by several publications. The novel follows an elderly widow who finds an ominous note describing a murder in the woods; with no body or evidence, she retreats into her own mind to invent the entire story of the crime. The book explores themes of The Unreliable Mind as Author of Reality, Loneliness as a Catalyst for Psychological Unraveling, and The Subconscious Re-Staging of Past Trauma.

This guide refers to the 2021 Penguin Books paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide contain descriptions of mental illness, emotional abuse, animal cruelty and/or death, and illness or death.

Plot Summary

The novel is narrated in the first person by Vesta Gul, a 72-year-old widow living alone in a remote cabin in the rural town of Levant. Her solitude is haunted by memories of her late husband, Walter; his critical, paternal voice recurs throughout the opening chapter and shapes Vesta’s responses to fear and bodily frailty. She often remembers his warnings about her “weak heart,” his practical habits, and the bronze urn of his ashes on her bedside table, and these remembrances frame her interior monologue from the outset (4).

Vesta is walking her dog, Charlie, in the birch woods near her remote home when she discovers a handwritten note. It reads, “Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn’t me. Here is her dead body” (1). There is no body or any other evidence of a crime. Vesta, who recently moved from Monlith after the death of her controlling husband, Walter, is initially dismissive but soon becomes unsettled. She takes the note home and begins imagining the life and death of the mysterious Magda.

Living in isolation, Vesta’s main companion is Charlie. The note disrupts her quiet routine, and she becomes preoccupied with the idea of a murder in her woods. She decides against involving the police, fearing they will not take her seriously. Instead, she constructs a detailed narrative, inventing a persona for the victim, Magda, as a young Eastern European immigrant with a troubled past. She names the note’s author Blake, a local teenage boy. Her imagination fills in details about Magda’s life, drawing on her own feelings of being an outsider. Vesta also impulsively orders a black camouflage bodysuit online.

Vesta’s obsession deepens, and she begins an amateur investigation. During a trip to the nearby town of Bethsmame, a fruitless internet search for a real Magda at the library leads her to research how to solve murder mysteries online. She discovers a website with a mystery-writing questionnaire, which prompts her to formally invent suspects, including a monstrous figure she calls Ghod, a handsome man named Henry, and Blake’s mother, Shirley. She methodically fills out a character profile questionnaire for Magda, inventing a complete, albeit fictional, life for her.

Vesta’s investigation begins to blur the line between her imagination and reality. She writes a poetic response to Blake and leaves it in the woods where she found the original note. When she returns later, the note is gone, and the rocks that held it down are arranged in the shape of a “B” (144). Vesta interprets this as a direct reply, and her paranoia grows. She feels she is being watched, and her sense of security in her isolated cabin is shattered. Her memories of her oppressive marriage to Walter increasingly color her thoughts, and she recalls his condescending attitude toward her imagination.

Upon returning home one day, Vesta finds that the seeds in her newly planted garden have been meticulously removed, and the soil has been smoothed over. She sees this as a direct threat from someone involved in the mystery. Disturbed, she decides to finally dispose of Walter’s ashes. She rows out onto the lake and drops the urn into the water. As she rows back, she believes she sees a shadowy figure moving inside her cabin. Though she finds nothing disturbed, the feeling of being violated intensifies.

Vesta’s investigation leads her to interact with locals she has cast in her narrative. She encounters a woman named Shirley in the library bathroom and, believing her to be Blake’s mother, gives her a ride home. Inside Shirley’s house, Vesta steals a hairbrush, convinced it belonged to Magda. Later, at the library, she finds a book of William Blake’s poetry with a passage underlined, which she takes as another clue from her imagined correspondent.

Her distress escalates when she returns home to find Charlie missing and her car inoperable. She starts walking and steals a hospital bill from her neighbors. As she continues up their pine-lined driveway, she collapses from a severe allergic reaction and awakens inside their house. The couple, dressed in elaborate Victorian costumes, briefly care for her and provide Benadryl. The wife explains that she is hosting a Victorian-themed murder mystery party to confront her terminal cancer, and mentions that Ghod is expected as a guest, arriving in the guise of Sherlock Holmes. Before Vesta leaves, the woman gives her a self-help book titled Death.

On her way home, Vesta notices the imprint of her own body in the garden dirt where she fell earlier. Charlie eventually returns, but he is uncharacteristically aggressive and hostile toward Vesta. That night, she finds a switchblade in a kitchen drawer, which she believes Magda left for her. She also hears a caller on a late-night radio show identify herself as Magdalena, which she interprets as a message from the dead girl. The next morning, Vesta discovers that Charlie has shredded all of her notes and papers related to the mystery. Among the scraps, she finds a fragment of a note in her own handwriting that seems to be a draft of the original message about Magda, suggesting that she herself authored the mystery that consumed her.

Vesta, feeling watched and threatened, confronts Charlie. He growls and lunges at her. In a moment of terror, Vesta stabs him with the switchblade, fatally wounding him. She feels no guilt, believing she acted in self-defense. Now completely alone, Vesta writes one last note: “Her name was Vesta” (258). She puts on the black camouflage bodysuit, leaves her cabin, and walks deep into the pine woods. Lying down on the forest floor, she feels a sense of peace as she succumbs to the toxic pines.