Excerpt from Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When we get home, the woman is outside hanging wet clothes on the line of rope between the trees. I imagine the marks on her thighs again. They are like welts, like slugs crawling up her leg. My thighs are like my arms. They are just skin and flesh with no marks. They are clean blank skin and flesh. Nothing is ever going to crawl up them, not ever, I decide. I'd die before I let anyone give me marks like the woman's, I decide. Even if they are just marks of magic. I hide my skirt of poison berries behind Waldemar as we pass and wave to the woman. We go inside the house. I pull a big black pot from the cupboard and fill it with the poison berries.

"How do you make jam, Waldemar?" I ask my brother.

"Add sugar and cook it for a long time."

"Oh, I love sugar," I say. "I'll do it tonight while the woman is sleeping."

"You better not taste too much of it. Don't forget, when you cook it, the poison gets stronger."

"Will you help me remember, Waldemar?"

"No," he says and puts a few more poison berries up his nose. "I have to sleep at night. If I don't sleep, I feel sick during the day. I don't like feeling sick at school."

"Oh, poor little Waldemar," I say, mocking him. I swallow a few of the berries and drag the pot into our bedroom and hide it in the closet.

When the woman comes back in from hanging the clothes, she says, "Go play outdoors, children. Waldemar, go run around while the sun is still shining. Urszula, go and be energetic. You look so serious. You look like an old lady. Go out and have fun. It's good for you."

"I don't like fun," I say.

Waldemar snorts and goes outside to play. I want to play with Waldemar, but I have to stay in my room to guard my pot of poison berries in the closet. If the woman finds it, she'll start asking questions. She'll get in the way of my killing Jarek Jaskolka, and then I'll be stuck here on Earth with her forever. I can imagine what she'll say if she discovers my plan. "There is something wrong with you, Urszula."

"No," I will tell her. "There is something wrong with this place. There is something wrong with you and everybody here. There is nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with me." And anyway, I still have to find Jarek Jaskolka. I can't kill him if I don't know where he is, after all. While Waldemar is still outside playing, I go to the kitchen. It smells like cooking rice and parsley.

"Hello," I say to the woman. "Jarek Jaskolka, does he still live on Grjicheva?"

"Of course not. Unless he lives in a hole in the ground. All the houses got torn down there. I hope he moved very far away. His sister is the lady in the library."

"That big fatso?"

"Don't be cruel."

"I think I need a book to read," I say.

"Then go, go," the woman says angrily. "I don't know what you're up to, but remember what I said about Jarek Jaskolka. Remember the marks. But go, do what you want, as if I care."

"You're angry at me now because I want to read a book?"

"Urszula is Urszula," is all she says. She leaves the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, and goes outside to watch Waldemar build a tower of pinecones. The woman is mean and stupid, I think. The entire world is stupid. I find a sharp butcher knife in the drawer and take it to my room and hide it in my satchel. I kick at the walls for a while. Then I start off for the library to find the fat sister of the man I am going to kill.


"Jaskolka?" the fat woman asks. "I don't use that name anymore. What do you want? Why are you asking?"

"I'm just curious. What happened when they tore your house down for the tramway? My mother lived on Grjicheva once, too."

"Whose daughter are you?" the fat lady asks.

"My name is Urszula" is all I say.

"Those houses on Grjicheva were all poor and ugly and it's a good thing they're gone now or else they'd just crumble down over our heads and kill us."

Excerpted from Homesick for Another World by Ottessa Moshfegh. Copyright © 2017 by Ottessa Moshfegh. Excerpted by permission of Penguin Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.