Eileen may be 'unfit for the world,' but I was pulling for her.Įileen's complicated relationship with her own body struck me as the funniest and at the same time saddest element of her story. Wonderfully horrible Humbert Humbert also comes to mind. In Eileen, her dark wit gets a thorough, long-form workout.Įileen could have stepped out of Flannery O'Connor or Shirley Jackson. She received the Plimpton Discovery Prize from The Paris Review and a coveted Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Moshfegh manages to make all this comical, with a touch of tragedy - or is it tragic with a touch of comedy? As a short story writer, she's received acclaim for her inventive, incisive prose (she also previously published a novella, McGlue).

A 'fabulous shoplifter,' she deploys a flat, deadpan expression that she calls her 'death mask' to keep the curious at bay. She expresses rare joy over National Geographic, especially articles depicting 'the naïve beliefs of the primitives, their blood rites, the human sacrifices, all that needless suffering.' She keeps a desiccated field mouse in the glove box of her car as a good luck charm. This last is an act to which Eileen can well relate.Įileen hates almost everything, and is unhappy and angry just about all the time. She nurses sympathy for the incarcerated children, even those who have committed such unspeakable crimes as drowning a younger sibling, burning down the family house or slitting a father's throat. Their alcoholic mother died five years before - her daughter remembers the 'frothiness of her graying hair' as the corpse cooled in the bed next to her.Īre we having fun yet? But this is the spell that Moshfegh casts: Dark business, dark, dark business, but told in such a precise manner (the 'frothiness' of that hair!) that I was sucked in.Įileen works as a secretary at Moorehead, a prison for delinquent boys. Eileen's perky sister long ago decamped and now rarely visits. She lives with her verbally abusive, gin-drunk father in a blue-collar Boston suburb that Eileen snarkily dubs 'X-ville.' The two make for a well-suited dysfunctional tag team: He sends her out for his daily bottle she's glad to do it because she wants him drunk enough to pass out. It is the week before Christmas in 1964, but we won't find any pretty tree, wonderful presents or string of holiday lights in the Dunlop household.

I marveled at myself for enjoying the scenes I was witnessing, and wondered what dark magic the author had employed to make me smile at them.Ģ4-year-old Eileen Dunlop is damaged goods. These are some of the oxymorons that ran through my mind as I read Eileen, Ottessa Moshfegh's intense, flavorful, remarkable new novel. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Eileen Author Ottessa Moshfegh

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