Homesick for Another World

Homesick for Another World, the debut short story collection by renowned American author Ottessa Moshfegh (b. 1981) was published in 2017. Moshfegh’s first book was a novella, McGlue, published by Fence Books in 2014, but it was Eileen, shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, that introduced her work to a wide audience. Moshfegh is known for her unique style, characterized by razor-sharp prose and a keen eye for the intricacies of human behavior, and for her unflinching depiction of the most unsettling aspects of modern life, such as addiction, sexual violence, isolation, and mental health conditions. In addition to the works named above, she has written three other novels: My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), Death in Her Hands (2020), and Lapvona (2022).

This summary is based on the 2017 Penguin Books edition. Most of the stories in Homesick for Another World first appeared in literary journals and magazines such as The Paris Review and The New Yorker. The final story, “A Better Place,” appears only in this collection.

Content Warning: The stories in this book contain explicit descriptions of sex work, drug use, thoughts of suicide, mental health conditions, and interpersonal violence.

Story Summaries

The first story in the collection, “Bettering Myself,” is told from the perspective of Ms. Mooney, a 30-year-old woman who teaches at a Ukrainian Catholic school in New York City and deals with addictions to alcohol and cocaine. The story describes Mooney’s increasing isolation as she fails to connect with her students, her friends, and her younger boyfriend. Things come to a head when Ms. Mooney is confronted by her ex-husband, who offers her an undisclosed sum of money to stop contacting him. She agrees and plans to quit her job entirely but ultimately rips up her resignation letter at a nearby bar.

In “Mr. Wu,” the titular character is a lonely man in his mid-forties who believes he is in love with a nameless woman working in his neighborhood computer arcade. After realizing that the number for the arcade is also her personal cell phone number, Mr. Wu agonizes about how to contact her. He decides to text his crush an insulting message, hoping it will cause her to give in. It works, and the two plan to meet. Before they meet up, however, Mr. Wu begins to regret his decision and grows anxious thinking about having sex with her. He visits a sex worker and engages in acts that previously disgusted him. When he finally meets up with the arcade worker, she rejects him wordlessly. He sets off fireworks and returns home in celebration.

The protagonist of “Malibu” is an unnamed man with bulimia living alone in the Los Angeles area. The man’s eating disorder dominates his life, and he is obsessed with his appearance, especially his hands (which he considers “feminine”) and a large rash that covers most of his body. Like many of Moshfegh’s characters, the man is incredibly isolated: His only regular contact is his uncle, who also lives alone and who has promised to leave the man money in his will. The two men travel to Malibu, where they scout locations for the man to scatter his uncle’s ashes. The uncle is unsatisfied. Later that day, the man has a sexual encounter he finds disturbing with a woman named Terri, whom he met while fabricating unemployment documents.

“The Weirdos” tells the story of an unnamed woman living with a boyfriend she hates. The boyfriend manages the apartment complex where the two live and holds a number of conspiratorial beliefs, such as the idea that aliens can be summoned using bowls of water as mirrors. Despite her disgust with her boyfriend’s appearance and behaviors, the narrator stays with him and offers to support his efforts to kill the birds that surround their complex. When two new tenants arrive with a year of rent, the narrator briefly considers taking the money and leaving her boyfriend, who now has a drug addiction. After a troubling dream, however, she decides to stay, wondering if he is the man of her dreams after all.

In “A Dark and Winding Road,” a man named Charles runs away to his family’s cabin after a fight with his pregnant wife. The cabin lies at the end of the titular dark and winding road, with no cell reception, running water, or electricity. Charles spends a night and day alone at the cabin, drinking, smoking marijuana, and thinking about his family. On the second day, smoking marijuana leads Charles to a dark mental space, and he considers hanging himself. He is interrupted by a strange woman named Michelle, who says she’s there to see MJ, Charles’s younger brother. Charles lies to Michelle, leading her to believe that he and MJ are lovers, and that MJ will shortly return to the cabin. The two wait awkwardly for MJ before Michelle gets bored and suggests they smoke the crystal meth she brought. The story ends with Michelle penetrating Charles with a dildo found in the cabin.

The narrator of “No Place for Good People” is a misanthropic 64-year-old widower named Larry, who works at Offerings, a residential facility for adults with developmental disabilities. Larry feels no grief for his late wife, whom he did not love, and is glad when his semi-estranged daughter Lacey removes most of his wife’s belongings from the house. He fills the house with succulents, which he propagates in the china bowls Lacey left behind. At Offerings, Larry is responsible for chaperoning three men—Paul, Claude, and Francis—inside and outside of the facility. Paul asks to go to Hooters for his 30th birthday, causing Larry to think back to his own 50th birthday, which included an embarrassing Hooters trip with his father-in-law. When Larry, Paul, and Claude arrive at Hooters, they see that it has closed, replaced by the family-oriented chain restaurant Friendly’s. Paul is initially disappointed, but ultimately enjoys his birthday celebration. The story ends with Larry asleep at home, surrounded by his succulents.

The unnamed narrator of “Slumming” is a high school English teacher who spends her summers in the small town of Alna. She enjoys Alna’s impoverished aesthetic, but considers the locals “stupid” and “lazy,” especially those affected by addiction, whom she calls “zombies.” Despite her disdain for the people of Alna, the narrator has a sexual relationship with a local, her property manager Clark, and buys drugs from the “zombies” three days a week. One summer day, the narrator returns home from buying drugs to find a pregnant teenager standing in front of her house. The teenager offers to clean her house for $10, and the narrator agrees. After the pregnant teenager falls while cleaning, the narrator notices blood between her thighs but does not mention anything. The girl is eventually taken to the hospital, and the narrator tosses her drugs into the river. The next morning, she buys more.

“An Honest Woman” describes the strange relationship between a 60-year-old man named Jeb, who has vitiligo, and his unnamed neighbor, a woman in her thirties. After their first meeting, Jeb spends his days in his basement, listening to the neighbor through a vent. When Jeb’s nephew visits, Jeb encourages him to ask the neighbor out. The neighbor agrees but invites Jeb to join them in order to keep it from seeming romantic. On the evening of the date, a storm prevents Jeb’s nephew from coming. Jeb tries to convince the woman to spend the night with him, but she rejects him and accuses him of resenting her for her youth and beauty. When Jeb calls her a tease, she straddles him and shoves her chest in his face, shocking him into silence. The neighbor laughs and leaves Jeb embarrassed. Jeb stops listening to her through the basement wall, and a few days later the boyfriend returns. Jeb walks through town, dreaming of a world in which his vitiligo is considered sacred.

“The Beach Boy” tells the story of a man named John whose wife of 29 years, Marcia, dies unexpectedly. John and Marcia recently returned from an anniversary vacation on an unnamed tropical island; after a homecoming dinner with friends, Marcia dies suddenly while sitting on the couch. John falls asleep next to her and doesn’t realize she’s dead until the next day. John is devastated by his wife’s death. Unmoored by his loss, he acts erratically at her funeral. When he finds a photo of a male sex worker taken by Marcia on vacation, John becomes convinced that Marcia cheated on him. John decides to return to the island to find the sex worker and have sex with him in order to get revenge on Marcia. He approaches the sex workers drunkenly and without money, and they reject him.

The unnamed narrator of “Nothing Ever Happens Here” is an 18-year-old from Utah trying to make it as an actor in Los Angeles. The narrator spends his days riding the bus across Los Angeles from one suspicious casting call to another, while in the evenings he works at a small pizza parlor. He rents a room in a large, run down house owned by a woman in her sixties named Mrs. Honigbaum. Mrs. Honigbaum is a Holocaust survivor with a warm and encouraging personality, and the narrator finds her a more welcoming presence than his mother, whom he left behind in Utah. As the narrator’s acting career fails to take off, he begins to spend more and more time with Mrs. Honigbaum, who encourages him to call his mother. When he finally does, there is no answer, and the narrator cries in Mrs. Honigbaum’s bed while she attempts to comfort him.

Nick Walden Darby-Stern, the narrator of “Dancing in the Moonlight,” is 34 and living in an eight-by-eight room in an unregulated building in New York City. He has a five-figure credit card debt, having spent all his money on expensive clothes and shoes. After a brief encounter at a holiday market, Nick becomes obsessed with Britt Wendt, a furniture designer. Desperate for her attention, Nick emails Britt on Christmas morning, concocting an imaginary upholstery project as an excuse for contacting her. When she doesn’t immediately respond, he despairs, and gets drunk in a nearly-abandoned Polish bar. He wakes up the next morning to a noncommittal response from Britt about the ottoman’s dimensions and takes this as evidence that she’s interested in him. Nick rushes to Rhode Island and spends all of his remaining money on an ottoman for Britt to reupholster. When he returns home, he sees that his house is on fire.

“The Surrogate” is narrated by a white woman hired to act as a surrogate vice-president for an Asian-American company. The narrator’s real name is never revealed, but her surrogate name is Stephanie Reilly. Stephanie’s boss is a man named Lao Ting, who believes that her attractive appearance will give the company an advantage in negotiations with American businessmen. Despite the affirmations she receives at work, Stephanie is extremely self-conscious about her genitals, which are swollen as a result of a pituitary condition that she blames on demonic possession. Stephanie enjoys dressing up and pursuing physical relationships, but does not engage in sex; instead, she finds pleasure in being watched. When Lao Ting dies, his family is unable to maintain the business, and Stephanie’s mental health quickly deteriorates. Desperate for help, she reaches out to a magician recommended by a friend; shortly after, she moves in with the magician.

The shortest story in the collection is “The Locked Room,” which tells the story of an unnamed girl who gets locked in a room with her boyfriend Takashi. Takashi dresses eccentrically and does not care about his appearance, and the narrator, who is shy and anxious, is drawn to his fearless nature. The narrator and Takashi both attend the same music school, and one day they get trapped together in a fifth-floor practice room. The narrator tries to escape by creating a long rope out of opera costumes and climbing out the window, but before she can start climbing, she is stopped by a mysterious man who appears in the alley below. The narrator wonders if he is a guardian angel. Shortly after, a janitor smells Takashi’s cigarette smoke and opens the locked door. The narrator breaks up with Takashi and returns home, vowing to live only for herself from now on.

Urszula, the young narrator of, “A Better Place,” believes that she comes from a place other than Earth. Urszula and her twin brother Waldemar believe that, in order to return to this better place, they must either die or kill the right person. Urszula, who is miserably unhappy on Earth, determines that the right person for her to kill is named Jarek Jaskolka. Although she believes she made the name up, she soon learns that her mother (who she calls “the woman”) knows a man by that name. He lived next door to the woman when she was younger, and hurt her badly, leaving her with thick scars on her thighs. Urszula decides to kill Jarek Jaskolka by feeding him jam made with poison berries and then stabbing him once he is unconscious. She shares her plans with Waldemar, who comes with her to Jaskolka’s house but is afraid to go inside. The story ends with Urszula standing alone at Jaskolka’s front door, waiting for him to come out.