McGlue
A Novella

Quotes

Winner of the inaugural Fence Modern Prize in Prose
Winner 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