Eileen

I found this book hard to review. I'm quite sure 3 stars is an unfairly low rating. I'll do my best to explain.Let me start with what I liked about the book. Number 1-Eileen's character and voice. She's dark and brutal and, in her own way, honest. There are too few female protagonists out there that talk about their bathroom habits or masturbatory fantasies or violent desires in such a straight forward, unabashed way as Eileen does. She feels so authentic, even if much of what she says can't be taken at face value. All in all, I loved this character. Number 2-The town of X-ville. Moshfegh creates a dark little corner of America reminiscent of one Shirley Jackson might have imagined. With, at least imaginatively, the boys prison at its center, X-ville radiates a sad, tragic kind of provincialism that makes the reader feel for Eileen and her sense of claustrophobia. And Moshfegh makes it clear that for all its smallness and casual cruelties, Eileen still has a kind of love for the place, much like, despite the wretchedness of her father, she can't help but love him too, even as she thinks about killing him. Her desire to leave but inability to do so create the primary conflict of the first half of the book.Ok, my main problem with the story is its length. Not that it's a long book, but the entire first half of the book merely serves Eileen's voice. Yes, It introduces her character, situation and home, but that could all be cut down to less than fifty pages (perhaps far less). To me, it felt that the author, in her pure joy of writing Eileen's voice, luxuriated in and indulged that pleasure far too long while striving to find her plot. She almost gets away with it (or, in many people's opinion, does get away with it) because the voice is so compelling. My other issue, which I think stems from the first, is that I felt, as I just mentioned, that I could feel the author searching for her plot. As if Moshfegh knew she wanted to get Eileen out of X-ville, but didn't figure out how to accomplish this until half way through the novel. Then she introduces Rebecca and this very odd plot twist (which I liked) that comes out of the blue. In my very humble opinion, I think that the author, once she discovered Rebecca and her usefulness, could have gone back and streamlined the first half of the story, cutting about 100 pages. This sense of groping also came through in Moshfegh's instance on pointing the reader's attention to certain objects throughout the novel. For instance, she refers to icicles over and over again, imagining them as murderous and threatening. I said to my wife about 1/3 of the way through that something better happen with these icicles, or I'd be pissed. Well, something does, but it's minor and feels like an afterthought. She does the same thing with the car and its exhaust issues, though this gets more consequentially used.So, all that's to say I thoroughly enjoyed Moshfegh's writing. She crafts a compelling character that fascinates and disturbs at the same time. However, it takes over half the book for the plot to actually kick in, which, for me, meant too little tension in the first part of the book. All though she has Eileen constantly assuring the reader that consequential happenings wait just around the corner, I became impatient, feeling that the character's repeated "little did I know this would be my last Christmas in x-ville" acted as stand ins for actual suspense. When the plot does kick in, its pace picks up and I did find the conclusion, for the most part, satisfying. I would recommend giving the book a read, if for no other reason than the quality of the writing and the uniqueness of the character's voice. I'm for more character's like this in fiction. (less)

“The idea that my brains could be untangled, straightened out, and thus refashioned into a state of peace and sanity was a comforting fantasy.” - Eileen.The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. But her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.I’ve been longing to read an Ottessa Moshfegh book for so long and finally picked this one up. This was her debut novel and it was a strange one! The main character, Eileen, is definitely unlikeable and pretty unreliable as well. She is very self-loathing and has some very questionable habits. However, all these qualities did make her character super interesting and unique to read. I did feel like this book was fairly slow moving until around the end where it picked up plot wise. That being said, there are plenty of content warnings for this book, DM me if you want to know more. Overall, I did enjoy this book and thought that the writing was great. It was pretty blunt and sometimes sarcastic which I liked. This book definitely won’t be for everyone but I am looking forward to reading another of Moshfegh’s novels.

Eileen is the story of a 24 yr old virgin, living an existence of deliberate unattractiveness as possible, with her chronically alcoholic father, in a house in squalid condition neither one of them lift a finger to clean. eileen has abandoned most of the living space for the attic she sleeps and the basement for use of the toilet away from her father’s hearing were he ever sober to hear.eileen goes as long as she can before washing her body. She has a dull job, hired with recommendation of her father, a respected retired paranoid cop, at juvenile detention facility. when she’s not stalking a co-worker, she’s fantasizing her escape from her small town, miserable home life, and dull job, from which she finds companionship with a woman hired to work at the facility, a woman, in contrast to eileen, elegant, outgoing and fashionably dressed.eileen, sharing her story decades later as an elderly woman offers no more than that she escaped. nothing dramatic is promised, yet from the opening pages she never reduces the feel of tension, in this sad-faced story told with an eerie suspenseful tone usually associated with horror and crime mysteries. readers of the existentialist short novels Nausea by jean paul sartre and The Stranger by albert camus will recognize her kinship.

An elderly Eileen relates her young, twisted life from fifty years ago in Boston. Her story builds a picture towards something terrible, as she describes her suffocating near-sexual co-habitation with her widowed father in a dirty, hoarded house, the pair held together by a fragile loyalty to her dead mother. It is when she befriends Rebecca, a bright and breezy co-worker who is uncannily nice to her, and stalks an attractive prison guard, Randy, that it becomes clear Eileen cannot draw appropriate boundaries, quickly crushing on Rebecca, and copying her every move to the dark end.As in Plath’s “The Bell Jar” Eileen is unlikable and yet magnetic, whisked along by her own demons into the worst, obscure decisions instead of the obvious, happier solution, in the vein of Plath’s fatalism.Themes are strangled sexuality, the loss of body as a sensual tool, and how this manifests when faced with the mirror of an attractive, socially assured woman in Rebecca. It is a study in damage, and how that is projected onto others, a private world of pain only now being shared like a sacred secret, or picked scar. It’s heady and seductive writing, so intimate sometimes it feels like too much.Narrated grim detail show how a nasty and weak character can have a reader cheer for her. Everything is justified. The author achieves this by setting the two Eileens fifty years apart, an older Eileen plays sympathiser to past Eileen’s motives. This doesn’t help the older Eileen’s storytelling, as she misses basic decencies; the author uses this to fuel interest in both versions of Eileen. For fans of Plath, Highsmith, this book will be a joy, especially the way it all comes together at the end.

Wow - it's very hard to put my thoughts about this book into words. I can see why some reviewers are saying that it's not for everyone but I still believe that there is an important message here that can ring true to every person. Damaged, insecure and lonely people like Eileen are often overseen and ignored because they feel so awkward and dissociated themselves. It's a very unusual and uncomfortable read, I'd definitely have to say that, however it's also compelling and heart-breaking once you allow yourself to get into Eileen's head. Throughout the story, there are numerous hints that somehow the main protagonist will get through this hellish situation in her life and that's what kept me going because I really wondered how she would accomplish that difficult feat.

This book sat on my Kindle for ages before I got around to reading it. After looking at some of the negative reviews I am at a loss to understand why. No, it isn't fast paced with a murder on every page but the unfolding of Eileen's dreary prison life both at home and where she works is utterly compelling. We have the voice of Eileen as a 24 year old woman and the voice of a much older Eileen looking back over her life. The older Eileen is intriguing as we never quite understand what happened to her after the "event". None of the characters in the book are likeable; they are not meant to be. It would defeat the purpose of the book-I'm reminded of Brecht and his technique of alienation. We are intended to question the social realities of the book. Others have commented on similarities with Plath. The author is in fine company. A truly superb book. If your taste is for gory serial killers or cosy murders then don't bother with this but if your interest is piqued by intelligent writing and social comment then this is a must read

Eileen, the character and the entire book, fascinated me. A week after finishing it, I am still revisiting the story. It is a grim read about a dingy and lonely existence, full of instances of casual cruelty, carried out on vulnerable people by those who should care for them. Eileen is the narrator. She is unsparing in her account of her prison-like life with father. However, she does not tell the whole truth about her own life. I was full of pity for her plight and can only hope that the references to her as a much older person, with years of happier experience behind her, were true. You don't have to like and admire a character to be enthralled by their story.

So as many have said this book is grim but has a wonderful dark comedy throughout which helps lighten the load. Eileen is unlikeable to the point you can smell her but I found myself deeply sympathetic to her plight. Socially awkward myself when young, I could feel her pain to the point of cringe, that longing to be noticed but not capable of adequate response when it happens, the longing for an unattainable other and the fantasies of another better life, another better you. I personal liked the rawness, to the point of disgust as some have said, of the narration and could feel the environment through the words. I could smell her, her father, her house (and worse) but could also feel the crunch of the snow, the smell of the air and the beauty of the sunlight through the trees giving the sense of hope for the future happier Eileen. It’s a book that will stay with me a long time which is a credit to the writing.