All that Dissipates Must Descend

Otessa Moshfegh's stories constitute impeccably well-executed images of individual delusion and degradation. However caked with grime and waste, they can nonetheless be recognized as the exquisite miniatures that creative writing programs and major literary publications alike have trained their readers to appreciate. Read together, the stories in Homesick constitute a global and acute exposure of class relations, a decadent group portrait where the dominant strata (whether American, white, male, or college-educated) are exposed as too self-involved, desperate, credulous, and paralyzed to remain dominant for long.