McGlue

Discover the blistering first novella from the Booker-shortlisted author of Eileen and My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

They said I've done something wrong?... And they've just left me down here to starve. Haven't had a drop in days more so...

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of his name or situation or orientation - he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Now, McGlue wants one thing and one thing only: a drink. Because for McGlue, insufferable, terrifying memories accompany sobriety. Asail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us an unforgettable blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.

Review: Wonderful * Guardian *
Strange and beautiful * LA Times *
A gorgeously sordid story of love and murder on the high seas and in reeky corners of mid-nineteenth-century New York and points North. McGlue is a wonderwork of virtuoso prose and truths that will make you squirm and concur -- Gary Lutz
You're in safe, if sticky hands with an Ottessa Moshfegh story... Everything bulges and reeks in this novella, which feels as if it was written in a permanent state of nausea... The plot spins faster than its main character's head. What elevates this novella are the scalpelsharp observations about McGlue's nihilism and her prose, which is as distilled as the liquor McGlue necks. It's a wild ride. -- Fiona Wilson * The Times *
Moshfegh is... a superlative short-story writer... McGlue, which owes as much to Cormac McCarthy as it does to Poe or Melville, is an entertaining curio with some lovely baroque flourishes. -- Alasdair Lees * Independent *