Reviews
I really enjoy Moshfegh‘s writing, but found the end a bit anticlimactic
“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.
mid asssss book
wasn’t really interesting until the end
Very concerning
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.
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!
Diary of a morbid pixie dream girl.
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
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.
very very very detailled but halfway throught the story it became easier to read and the ending was suprising
Takes more than half of the book to get to the plot then uses triggering material for additional shock value.
“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
eh
she let her intrusive thoughts win
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 .
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.
being in this woman’s head was disturbing but this book got me out my reading slump
3.5
Highlights
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.
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.
??
?
Or maybe I wasn't quite so forceful.
If I hadn't been there...
Rebecca appeared...
I wasn't radical at all. I was just unhappy.
We exchanged smiles.
..., U did not want him to die.
I'd always believed ...
Being as young as I was...
I wasn't interested in fun...
Why should my heart ache for anyone but myself? If anyone was trapped and suffering and abused, it was me. I was the only one whose pain was real. Mine.
A grown woman is like a coyote - she can get by on very little. Men are more like house cats. Leave them alone for tọo long and they'll die of sadness.
There's nothing I detest more than men with happy childhoods.
I got over my childhood fear of the dark that day, I suppose. Nothing came at me-no angry spirits attacked me, no restless ghosts tried to suck out my soul. They left me alone down there, which was just as painful.
You'd have expected me to enjoy the stillness of closed rooms, take comfort in dull silence, my gaze moving slowly across paper, walls, heavy curtains, thoughts never shifting from what my eyes identified book, desk, tree, person. But I deplored silence. I deplored stillness. I hated almost everything. I was very unhappy and angry all the time.I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier. I was like Joan of Arc, or Hamlet, but born into the wrong lifethe life of a nobody, a waif, invisible. There's no better way to say it: I was not myselt back then. I was someone else. I was Eileen.
I'd never learned how to relate to people, much less how to speak up for myself. I preferred to sit and rage quietly. I'd been a silent child, the kind to suck my thumb long enough to buck out my front teeth. I was lucky they did not buck out too far. Still, of course, I felt my mouth was horselike and ugly, and so I barely smiled. When I did smile, I worked very hard to keep my top lip from riding up, something that required great restraint, self-awareness and self-control. The time I spent disciplining that lip, you would not believe. I truly felt that the inside of my mouth was such a private area, caverns and folds of wet parting flesh, that letting anyone see into it was just as bad as spreading my legs.
A house that is so well maintained, furnished with good-looking furniture of high quality, decorated tastefully, everything in its place, becomes a living tomb. People truly engaged in life have messy houses.I knew this implicitly at age twenty-four. Of course at twenty-four I was also obsessed with death.
There's nothing I detest more than men with happy childhoods.