Reviews with content warning for Kidnapping - Byłam Eileen

Reviews tagging Kidnapping

Byłam Eileen, by Ottessa Moshfegh

33 reviews

codecat's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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dale1997's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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bugcollector's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.75

At last, I'm done with this book, and it only took me 12 months!

Spoiler

Eileen starts off funny and cunning. A bit suicidal, but mainly stuck in her place craving an escape:
▫️ "Icicles hung from the rafter over the front door, and I stood there imagining them cracking and darting through my breasts, slicing through the thick gristle of my shoulder like bullets or cleaving my brain into pieces." (p. 3)
▫️ "If my daydreams from back then cane true, one day I'd have found him splayed out at the bottom of the stairs, neck broken but still breathing. 'It's about time', I'd say with the most bored affect I could master, peering over his dying body." (p. 5)
▫️ "He was a cruel character. Imagining his parents beating him as a child is the only path to forgiveness that I have found so far. It isn't perfect but it does the trick." (p. 6)
▫️ "I could be very dramatic with my self assessments." (p. 8)
▫️ "I imagined what relief I might feel if I could lie on Dr. Frye's couch just once and confess like some sort of fallen hero that my life was simply intolerable. But, in fact it was tolerable. I'd been tolerating it after all." (p. 22)

As I read on (until about p. 50) Nothing made me want to pick this book again for a long while. I Ended up reading Moshfegh's newest book from this year, Lapnovka, and regretted it dearly, which put me off from this one even more. Determined to cut down my currently reading list before the new year, I found myself working hard to read through it this weekend.

My problem with Eileen is that she stays stuck in the place for most of the book. Near the very end something interesting happens, but by then you have fallen asleep.
Her routine isn't unique, and there's so much you can read about her hating everything, her repeating that she's a new girl now and those things happened in the past, her saying it's the last time she went to the prison, the last time she saw her father, the last time she saw an icicle drop, yada yada yada.
Eileen ends being relatable relatively fast. She is deeply disterbing, pretty vile, and endulged with some hard topics (Moshpeg loves bringing poop and masterbation to the conversation)

I think the plot sounds promising, centering a young girl seeking an escape.
But you won't get an escape with it, you'd end up wanting to escape from it.

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lauramparis's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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oddreads_nicolestins's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

So much of this book was about making us understand how "perverse" or "deviant" Eileen was in her mid-20s. I couldn't really enjoy this book because everything was framed so negatively except her "love interests" and quick statements about her experience as an aged woman. Eileen was basically angry, depressed, and emotionally stunted so badly that she made bad decisions. That's usually how it goes, and there are so many stories like this- I can't say how this is more "playful, shocking, or witty" (NYT review blurb 😂) than similar stories.

As for the writing style, it was okay. There were no major flaws that put me off. It just wasn't as good as I thought it would be- and of course the constant references to weight or food were very annoying. I had heard that her books were fatphobic and after reading just this book I can see that.

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marshamudpuddle's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny reflective sad slow-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.5

This starts superbly, with one of the best opening paragraphs I have ever read. It immediately conjures into existence a fully three-dimensional human being in little more than a page. I think I read it three times through before being able to carry on, just to marvel at its construction! Eileen is there, living, breathing, complicated and messy and real.

Things slowly and deliciously unfold from there, with a creeping sense of both sadness and tension. Eileen is slightly more likeable than the wonderfully off-putting narrator of Moshfegh's later novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Yet I was still impressed how nasty Moshfegh allows her to be, how petty and lazy and mean, while remaining unwaveringly the object of our sympathy, someone we root for, even love. It is such an honest book, so unsanitised. The locations, too -- the crumbling house where her drunken father slowly rots away; the cold, claustrophobic boys' prison; the snowy streets and the warmth of the liquor store -- are brilliantly evoked.

The only thing I wasn't entirely convinced by was the character of Rebecca. We see her through Eileen's eyes, of course, and to Eileen she is this larger-than-life figure, this enigma. But I just didn't fully believe in her in the way I did the other characters. I did, however, believe in Eileen's fascination with her, which is essential to make the latter developments of the plot work.

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venusect's review against another edition

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dark funny tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Ottessa successfully made Eileen such an unlikeable character while keeping me invested! For me that was what kept the slow pace of the novel in balance. You’re just following Eileen in the week leading up to Christmas with a lot of her little dark and strange thoughts mixed in with some flashbacks that tell us more about her choices and her life at that point in time. Some of the shit she said made me just need to put down the put for sec and stare off into space.

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