Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh

In Ottessa Moshfegh’s short story collection Homesick for Another World, readers are invited into a discomforting yet oddly familiar universe populated by characters who seem fundamentally out of place in their own lives. Following her acclaimed debut novel Eileen, Moshfegh has crafted fourteen stories that delve into the dark, unsettling corners of human existence with unflinching precision and unexpected tenderness. These stories explore the peculiar ways in which people navigate their own inadequacies, addictions, and desperate yearnings for connection in a world that feels inherently wrong to them.

The collection presents a gallery of misfits and malcontents who share a common affliction—they are all, in their unique ways, homesick for somewhere else, be it another life, another body, or some transcendent plane of existence. What makes Moshfegh’s work so compelling is not simply her willingness to confront the grotesque aspects of humanity, but her ability to infuse these portraits with a strange, almost reluctant compassion.

The Art of Discomfort: Style and Technique

Moshfegh writes with a distinctive voice that combines stark, unadorned prose with moments of startling insight. Her style is characterized by:

1. Unflinching physical descriptions that foreground the body’s imperfections and functions
2. Deadpan humor that emerges from the juxtaposition of the profound and the profane
3. A penetrating psychological eye that reveals her characters’ self-deceptions
4. Narrative restraint that allows uncomfortable situations to unfold without moral commentary

In stories like “Bettering Myself,” the collection’s opener about an alcoholic Catholic school teacher, Moshfegh establishes her mastery of first-person narration. The protagonist’s casual admission that she “had been fudging the state exams” for her disadvantaged students is delivered with such matter-of-fact simplicity that the ethical breach becomes secondary to our understanding of her desperate, flailing attempts to find meaning in her life.

This technique—normalizing the transgressive through deceptively straightforward narration—is one of Moshfegh’s hallmarks. It creates a peculiar intimacy with characters who might otherwise be difficult to empathize with, forcing readers to confront their own capacity for similar thoughts or behaviors.

The Geography of Alienation

Throughout “Homesick for Another World” collection, Moshfegh establishes settings that serve as external manifestations of her characters’ internal states. In “Slumming,” a privileged teacher spends summers in a poor, drug-addled town called Alna, where she can indulge her worst impulses while maintaining a veneer of superiority. The town becomes a physical embodiment of her own moral deterioration—a place where she can be her worst self without consequence.

Similarly, in “The Surrogate,” the protagonist’s disfigured body becomes a landscape to be navigated, understood, and ultimately transcended. The story’s exploration of physical abnormality serves as a powerful metaphor for the universal experience of feeling alien in one’s own skin.

These environments—whether the sterile apartments in “Mr. Wu,” the squalid flophouse in “Dancing in the Moonlight,” or the practice room in “The Locked Room”—are never merely backdrops. They are active participants in the narrative, shaping and reflecting the psychological states of the characters who inhabit them.

The Collection’s Strengths: What Makes It Exceptional

Moshfegh’s Homesick for Another World stands out for several reasons:

• Psychological depth: Each character, no matter how repulsive or pathetic, is rendered with psychological complexity that prevents them from becoming mere caricatures.
• Fearless exploration of taboo: From bodily functions to inappropriate desires, Moshfegh refuses to sanitize human experience, instead embracing its messiness with a refreshing lack of sentimentality.
• Dark humor: Even in the bleakest moments, Moshfegh finds opportunities for humor that feels both unexpected and organic to the situations she creates.
• Thematic coherence: While each story stands alone, the collection is unified by recurring themes of alienation, self-deception, and the desperate search for transcendence.

In “Mr. Wu,” perhaps one of the collection’s most affecting stories, a man’s infatuation with an arcade worker leads him through a series of humiliations that are simultaneously pathetic and deeply human. The story’s resolution—Mr. Wu’s final act of defiance against his own mediocrity—exemplifies Moshfegh’s ability to find dignity in the undignified.

Standout Stories and Recurring Themes

Among the collection’s strongest offerings:

• “Bettering Myself” introduces us to a functioning alcoholic teacher whose attempts at self-improvement are perpetually undermined by her own self-destructive tendencies. The irony of the title becomes increasingly apparent as we witness her spiral of poor decisions.
• “The Beach Boy” follows a middle-aged man’s existential crisis after his wife’s sudden death. His fixation on a photograph from their vacation reveals the emptiness at the center of their marriage and his own life.
• “A Better Place” closes the collection with a haunting tale of two siblings who believe they come from another world. The story’s blend of childhood innocence and disturbing violence creates a disquieting fairy tale quality that lingers long after reading.

Throughout these and other stories, Moshfegh returns to several key themes:

1. The body as both prison and pleasure source: Characters are constantly aware of their physical forms, which serve as sources of both shame and occasional satisfaction.
2. Addiction as coping mechanism: Substances from alcohol to “zombie dust” provide temporary escapes from unbearable reality.
3. The gap between self-perception and reality: Many characters maintain elaborate delusions about themselves that the reader can see through but they cannot.
4. The search for transcendence: Whether through sex, drugs, violence, or fantasy, characters seek ways to escape their mundane existences.

Areas for Criticism: Where the Collection Falters

Despite its considerable strengths, Homesick for Another World is not without weaknesses:

• Repetitive character types: While psychologically complex, many protagonists share similar traits—addiction issues, self-loathing, and social awkwardness—which can create a sense of diminishing returns as the collection progresses.
• Occasional emotional detachment: Moshfegh’s commitment to unsentimental storytelling sometimes creates an emotional distance that can make it difficult to fully invest in certain characters’ plights.
• Uneven pacing: Some stories, particularly “Dancing in the Moonlight,” meander without the narrative tension that drives the collection’s stronger pieces.
• Limited range of voices: Despite varying in gender and circumstance, many narrators share a similar sardonic worldview that occasionally threatens to become the author’s voice rather than the character’s.

Comparison to Contemporary Works and Literary Tradition

Moshfegh’s work invites comparison to other contemporary short story writers like Mary Gaitskill and Miranda July, who similarly explore human vulnerability and alienation. However, her unflinching focus on the body’s functions and dysfunctions recalls earlier writers like William Burroughs.

In her willingness to dive into the depths of human depravity while maintaining a strange tenderness for her characters, Moshfegh indeed recalls Flannery O’Connor, though with a decidedly secular worldview. Like O’Connor, Moshfegh creates moments of grace in unlikely circumstances, though these moments are fleeting and ambiguous rather than redemptive.

The collection also shares DNA with the works of Denis Johnson, particularly Jesus’ Son, in its exploration of altered states and damaged psyches. Like Johnson, Moshfegh finds beauty in unexpected places—not despite her characters’ flaws but often because of them.

Final Assessment: The Collection’s Lasting Impact

Homesick for Another World is not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Moshfegh’s unflinching gaze at human frailty can be challenging, even off-putting at times. Yet there is something undeniably compelling about her vision—a clarity that cuts through social niceties to expose the raw, often ugly truth of what it means to be human.

The collection’s greatest achievement lies in its refusal to offer easy consolation or moral certainty. These stories don’t teach lessons or offer solutions to the problems they present. Instead, they invite readers to recognize the universal quality of feeling out of place—of being homesick for somewhere we can’t quite name or perhaps have never even been.

For readers willing to embrace discomfort and face the more unsavory aspects of human nature, Moshfegh offers a singular reading experience. Her characters, in all their flawed humanity, remind us that our own feelings of alienation and inadequacy are not unique but shared—a common condition that, paradoxically, might be the very thing that connects us all.

In this collection, Moshfegh establishes herself not just as a talented storyteller but as a distinctive literary voice—one that eschews convention and sentimentality in favor of a more complicated, more honest portrayal of human experience. Though not all stories hit with equal force, the collection as a whole represents a significant contribution to contemporary American fiction and confirms Moshfegh as one of the most exciting and original writers of her generation.

Homesick for Another World ultimately achieves what the best fiction aspires to: it makes us uncomfortable in ways that expand our understanding of ourselves and others. In Moshfegh’s vision, we may all be damaged, deluded, and disgusting—but in recognizing that shared condition, we find an unexpected form of communion.