As Saba boards her flight, she looks back, wondering if her relatives “might connect with her one more time,” and the need to connect shines throughout this strong collection.
For those that enjoyed Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch and Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, this is a great addition to the genre that might be called “millennial ennui.”
Moeng, a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford with an MFA from the University of Mississippi, writes with lush, heartfelt intensity that illuminates contemporary Botswana for readers who value complex female characters navigating a rapidly changing world.
With frequent nods to both contemporary and classic ghost-story writers (Daphne Du Maurier, Henry James), the success of these stories lies not just in the well-crafted writing but in the conscious mixing of a shape-shifting old world with an unreliably secure modern world. A masterly recharging of a treasured literary tradition that Murray clearly loves and respects.