McGlue

A Novella

By: Ottessa Moshfegh

Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla

The debut novella from one of contemporary fiction's most exciting young voices, now in a new edition.

Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation--he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety. A-sail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us a nasty heartless blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.

They said I've done something wrong? . . . And they've just left me down here to starve. They'll see this inanition and be so damned they'll fall to my feet and pass up hot cross buns slathered in fresh butter and beg I forgive them. All of them . . . : the entire world one by one. Like a good priest I'll pat their heads and nod. I'll dunk my skull into a barrel of gin.

Critic reviews

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

Excellent performance, challenging text

I loved listening to the audio book, full of life and energy and accurate portrayal of the characters

McGlue Review

The story was okay, the writing was fine, and overall, it was just an average book, in my opinion.

Ultra-sensory tale of a sailor

Every smell and flavor of a sea journey, every drop of alcohol and blood is tasted and woven into the story of McGlue, the sailor from Salem, as he clears his mind from a cloud of masculine confusion.

Rambling rubbish

The whole story and narration is just rambling rubbish
No real plot to the story besides the guy is an alcoholic.