Ottessa Moshfegh

Dreaming of life in the city while caring for her alcoholic father and working in a 1960s boys' prison, a disturbed young woman is manipulated into committing a psychologically charged crime during the holiday season.

Eileen

I had hard feelings around the holidays, the one time of year I couldn't help but fall prey to the canned self-pity Christmas prescribes. I’d mourn the lack of love and warmth in my life, wish upon stars for angels to come and pluck me from my misery and plunk me down into a whole new life, like in the movies. I was a sucker for the spirit of Christmas, as it was called. 

I often felt there was something wired weird in my brain, a problem so complicated only a lobotomy could solve it -I’d need a whole new mind or a whole new life. I could be very dramatic in my self-assessments.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA NEW BLOOD DAGGER AWARD 2016 Selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Times, Observer and Daily Telegraph Fully lives up to the hype. A taut psychological thriller, rippled with comedy as black as a raven's wing, Eileen is effortlessly stylish and compelling. - Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Times The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop. Trapped between caring for her alcoholic father and her job as a secretary at the boys' prison, she tempers her dreary days with dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, her nights and weekends are filled with shoplifting and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted, unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. But soon, Eileen's affection for Rebecca will pull her into a crime that far surpasses even her own wild imagination.

Tina ok

Here is how I spend my days now. I live in a beautiful place. I sleep in a beautiful bed. I eat beautiful food. I go for walks through beautiful places. I care for people deeply. At night my bed is full of love, because I alone am in it. I cry easily, from pain and pleasure, and I don't apologize for that. In the mornings I step outside and I'm thankful for another day. It took me many years to arrive at such a life.

amari

Lying there, I had a bad habit of drumming my fists on my stomach and pinching the negligible amount of fat on my thighs. I sincerely believed that if there were less of me, I would have fewer problems. 

I thought about showing it to Rebecca that evening. Perhaps I would suggest we go out to the woods and shoot at trees. Or we could go out to the frozen lake and stand and shoot at the moon. Or to the beach, lie on our backs, make angels in the snow, shoot at the stars. Such were my romantic ideas for the evening with my new best friend. 

Stephan Happe

I wasn't radical at all. I was just unhappy.

Caitlin

ame 

Natalie Stenson

A pitiful and prude young woman becomes obsessed with a new colleague, and finds herself doing whatever it takes to keep her new friend in her life. Eileen is narrated by the main character in her twilight years, looking back on her youth with tenderness and disgust. 

I’ve been ripping through Moshfegh’s body of work this year, and have found myself loving living within the minds of her absolutely detestable narrators. Eileen is hateful, judgmental, prudish, and miserly and yet I relate to her deeply, much to my own chagrin. I think what pulls me back to tales told from a “villian”s perspective, is that you realize you have quite a bit in common with the villian. There are no evil monsters, just pained humans doing monstrous deeds. Particularly, Eileen thematically hinges on our idea of guilt, crime, and punishment and who it applies to. One thing I’ve also noticed in many of these novels now is that that our love-to-hate main character never exactly wins, but also always seems to escape the heavy and expected consequences for their behavior. I appreciate this “lack of justice” sensation because it hammers home how people are rarely served their comeuppance. Perfect justice is something of fables, not so much real life. There will always be consequences, but people will do anything in their power to shirk them. Oftentimes, they are successful.

constance

A pitiful and prude young woman becomes obsessed with a new colleague, and finds herself doing whatever it takes to keep her new friend in her life. Eileen is narrated by the main character in her twilight years, looking back on her youth with tenderness and disgust. 

I’ve been ripping through Moshfegh’s body of work this year, and have found myself loving living within the minds of her absolutely detestable narrators. Eileen is hateful, judgmental, prudish, and miserly and yet I relate to her deeply, much to my own chagrin. I think what pulls me back to tales told from a “villian”s perspective, is that you realize you have quite a bit in common with the villian. There are no evil monsters, just pained humans doing monstrous deeds. Particularly, Eileen thematically hinges on our idea of guilt, crime, and punishment and who it applies to. One thing I’ve also noticed in many of these novels now is that that our love-to-hate main character never exactly wins, but also always seems to escape the heavy and expected consequences for their behavior. I appreciate this “lack of justice” sensation because it hammers home how people are rarely served their comeuppance. Perfect justice is something of fables, not so much real life. There will always be consequences, but people will do anything in their power to shirk them. Oftentimes, they are successful.

I really enjoy Moshfegh‘s writing, but found the end a bit anticlimactic

Lili

“This isn’t a story of how awful my father was, let me be clear” p.6 The following 200 or so pages proceed to be about how awful he was. This was not my favorite writing from Moshfegh still, I liked how Eileen depicts the violence of severing versions of yourself. You really can be strangers with your former or future self. 

Arie P

 wasn’t really interesting until the end

florrr

mid asssss book 

 wasn’t really interesting until the end

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE CWA NEW BLOOD DAGGER AWARD 2016* Trapped between caring for her alcoholic father and her job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, Eileen Dunlop dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, her nights and weekends are filled with shoplifting and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted, unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. But soon, Eileen’s affection for Rebecca pull her into a crime that far surpasses even her own wild imagination. ‘Fully lives up to the hype. A taut psychological thriller, rippled with comedy as black as a raven's wing, Eileen is effortlessly stylish and compelling’ The Times

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016

Chris Dailey

Gritty and visceral look at a gaggle of miserable people in a sleepy New England town. Full of graphic details of banal activities that somehow jar the reader into sympathy for decidedly unsympathetic people. Jealous, bitterness, lies and co-dependency litter the pages with a shot of debilitating alcoholism to boot. The novel follows a mousy Eileen who lives at home with her always drunk father, works at a prison for young boys and is immersed in self-loathing. Her life changes briefly for the better with the arrival of a vivacious psychologist until the story evolves into a thriller. Depraved but human the story keeps you engaged despite - or because of - pitiful characters.

emelia grace ilgner

i really loved the writing of this one, because i love moshfegh’s style, but it put me in a slump because it was pretty depressing and there weren’t any likeable characters or relieving plot lines. while i’m a big “character over plot” type girl and i love my messy and flawed women, this was a little much for me in this current moment. after a while i couldn’t bring myself to pick it back up. i got about half way through before i stopped completely and had to move onto something else to keep myself reading. until we meet again, eileen — i will finish it someday!

A. D. Knapp

Nova

3.5

Engrossed from start to finish. Uncomfortable with how much of Eileen’s narration I could relate to

Out of all of Moshfeghs Books this might be the best even though all her characters are slightly or extremely fatphobic and it never adds anything to the story… the start was quite slow but it picked up after the first half and was actually really interesting

Thea Sophie

repugnant and perverse enough to enthrall a gasp, action not nearly as suspenseful as build up promised, still a thrilling read nonetheless. i liked her desire for rebecca.

One thing about Moshfegh's writing, I find it compulsively readable. But I do not have too many thoughts about this otherwise - it came and went and I guess I felt as disaffectionate about it as the narration itself. I enjoyed the concept of it, the idea that we may long for things but we need our hands forced into action to actually reach out for them, the unreliable narration - actually, I suspect this novel could be a lot of fun to speculate about. But I do not feel up for it; I am mostly glad I read this so I can be aware of the cultural conversation.

es el segundo libro de ottessa que leo y nop, no es para mí.

catalina

very very very detailled but halfway throught the story it became easier to read and the ending was suprising

Hanne O

Takes more than half of the book to get to the plot then uses triggering material for additional shock value. 

Karmen 

Laura 

anastasia

“I didn't want anyone to think I was susceptible to bad breath, or that there were any organic processes occurring inside my body at all. Having to breathe was an embarrassment in itself. This was the kind of girl I was.”
I’m sorry if you don’t get it but I do

even on a reread i devoured it in two nights

girth brooks

Jasmine Ghartey

Irdha C

samira 

i really liked this book ! the book focused more on eileen’s character rather than having an actual plot going on but that’s what i really liked about it . i wish we had gotten a more in depth story of all the characters . there’s a lot of unanswered questions i have and it seems as though it’s up to the interpretation of the reader which bothers me a bit . i don’t think i’d recommend this book to anyone .

Syahla Aurel

I've had lived long enough that self-pity is no longer a pathetic habit of the psyche, but like a cold wet cloth on my forehead bringing down the fever of fear about my inevitable mortal demise.

LOVED IT.

3.75 stars: Moshfegh's Eileen is a captivating, repulsive, and at times, an unsettlingly gross experience, marking my introduction to her work. If you get, you get it. If you don't, you don't.

Madison Grady

being in this woman’s head was disturbing but this book got me out my reading slump

Eileen

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