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A review by kairhone
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
dark
tense
medium-paced
5.0
-Eileen is a bizarre individual on the year 1969 in a town she calls (narrating her life as a 24 year old as an old woman) "Xville".
-she is self described as a prude, wearing multiple layers of wool clothing because the thought of people seeing the shape of her body sickens her. She even elects to wear lipstick just because her lips match the color of her nipples and the idea that someone can imagine that ashames her.
-she works as a secretary at the Boys Correctional facility called Moorhead. Here she fixates on a security guard who was once an occupant at the facility: Randy. She remarks being jealous when she reads his file and discovers that he was put into the institution for sexual misconduct. She imagines what woman he may have raped and wishes someone would want to rape her, preferably Randy. Her self esteem is so low that she had always imagined her first sexual encounter as an assault
-she is lonely and often humiliated by her drunk and bitter father, who demands she buy him bottles of gin. He constantly calls her ugly and that she smells (she eats laxatives to rid herself of whatever she has eaten).
-her older and more loved sister, Joan, had left her sister to care for her dad alone whilst her mother (never lovable in life) is dead.
-Eileen begins to fantasize her own disappearance: she doesn't want anyone to know her plans and assume she is dead or abducted. She drives to a diner and contemplates whether the car will suit as a getaway. While there she observes a couple French kissing. When she leaves she shoves snow down her steam crouch and drives back with the windows down. Girl is weird. Girl is sexually frustrated.
-on Christmas Eve a new teacher is introduced: Rebecca, and Eileen is obsessed.
-the pinnacle is Rebecca learning about a prisoner, Lee Polk, and how his father raped him and his mother helped. She ties his mother to make her confess and Eileen aids. Ultimately using her to frame her father for murder and disappear as she planned.
-she is self described as a prude, wearing multiple layers of wool clothing because the thought of people seeing the shape of her body sickens her. She even elects to wear lipstick just because her lips match the color of her nipples and the idea that someone can imagine that ashames her.
-she works as a secretary at the Boys Correctional facility called Moorhead. Here she fixates on a security guard who was once an occupant at the facility: Randy. She remarks being jealous when she reads his file and discovers that he was put into the institution for sexual misconduct. She imagines what woman he may have raped and wishes someone would want to rape her, preferably Randy. Her self esteem is so low that she had always imagined her first sexual encounter as an assault
-she is lonely and often humiliated by her drunk and bitter father, who demands she buy him bottles of gin. He constantly calls her ugly and that she smells (she eats laxatives to rid herself of whatever she has eaten).
-her older and more loved sister, Joan, had left her sister to care for her dad alone whilst her mother (never lovable in life) is dead.
-Eileen begins to fantasize her own disappearance: she doesn't want anyone to know her plans and assume she is dead or abducted. She drives to a diner and contemplates whether the car will suit as a getaway. While there she observes a couple French kissing. When she leaves she shoves snow down her steam crouch and drives back with the windows down. Girl is weird. Girl is sexually frustrated.
-on Christmas Eve a new teacher is introduced: Rebecca, and Eileen is obsessed.
-the pinnacle is Rebecca learning about a prisoner, Lee Polk, and how his father raped him and his mother helped. She ties his mother to make her confess and Eileen aids. Ultimately using her to frame her father for murder and disappear as she planned.