How Does McGlue Compare To Other Ottessa Moshfegh Novels?

McGlue stands out in Ottessa Moshfegh's bibliography like a rough-Cut gem—raw, unpolished, and throbbing with a kind of desperate energy her later works refine but never dilute. While 'my year of rest and relaxation' and 'eileen' luxuriate in meticulous psychological dissection, McGlue feels like a fever dream scrawled in whiskey and regret. It's her shortest novel, but the prose punches harder, almost like Bukowski if he’d drowned in existential dread instead of booze. The protagonist’s fragmented memory mirrors the narrative’s chaotic structure, a stark contrast to the clinical precision of 'lapvona.' Here, Moshfegh’s obsession with bodily decay and self-destruction feels more visceral, less ironic. I keep returning to that scene where McGlue licks salt off a wound—it’s grotesque, yet weirdly poetic, encapsulating her knack for finding beauty in degradation.

What fascinates me is how this early work foreshadows her themes without the detachment of her later narrators. Where 'Death in Her Hands' plays with unreliable narration coyly, McGlue drowns in it. The supporting characters are hazier, more symbolic, like shadows in a drunkard’s vision. Yet that very ambiguity makes it haunting in a way her polished novels aren’t. It’s less about critique of society and more about the noise inside a crumbling mind. I’d recommend it to fans of her style who want to see the seeds of her brilliance before they sprouted into colder, sharper forms.

McGlue feels like Ottessa Moshfegh’s id unleashed—a grimy, unfiltered scream compared to the controlled sneer of her later novels. While 'Lapvona' luxuriates in medieval grotesquerie and 'homesick for another world' sharpens its claws on short-story precision, McGlue drowns in its own Filth with a kind of perverse joy. The protagonist’s alcoholism isn’t just a trait; it’s the narrative’s Bloodstream, pumping chaos into every paragraph. Her other works dissect alienation with scalpels, but here she swings a meat cleaver. The supporting cast barely registers as people, more like ghosts haunting McGlue’s guilt, which makes it feel Closer to a horror story than her usual transgressive fiction. That ending, though—abrupt and unresolved—sticks with you like a hangover.

If you’ve ever wondered what Ottessa Moshfegh’s writing would sound like if it got blackout drunk and started confessing sins to a bartender, McGlue is your answer. Compared to the sleek nihilism of 'My Year of Rest and Relaxation,' this novella is all jagged edges—a protagonist who’s equal parts pitiable and repulsive, stumbling through a plot that feels like it’s being reconstructed from his own drunken gaps. The language here is more experimental than her later work; sentences fragment and spiral, mimicking McGlue’s unstable psyche. It’s like watching a car Crash in slow motion, whereas 'Eileen' is more like observing a taxidermied animal through glass.

What’s missing, though, is the dark humor that tempers her other novels. McGlue’s suffering doesn’t wink at the reader—it claws at you. The maritime setting adds a mythic quality, almost like a deranged sailor’s yarn, but it lacks the suburban or urban claustrophobia that defines her other settings. I adore how unapologetically ugly it is, but it’s not the book I’d hand someone new to Moshfegh. It’s the cult favorite in her discography, the one you appreciate more after seeing her masterpieces.