Book Review: Eileen

Spoilers!

Short, nasty, and brutish. That’s a great descriptor of much of human history, and it’s also an apt descriptor for the life of Eileen in Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut 2015 book, Eileen. That is, this facet of Eileen’s life when she lives in X-ville (so she doesn’t name the town she grew up in), works at a boy’s prison, lives with her alcoholic, verbally abusive father, and pines for love of any kind, perverse or otherwise, and escape from X-ville, and her indefinable, amorphous x-life.

Admittedly, Moshfegh’s book was hard to get into at first. Set in the 1960s, with Eileen narrating as her older self looking back on her 24-year-old self, she epitomizes the misanthrope. She hates everyone and everything, dogs included (because her dog died, and it was terrible). She’s stalking a coworker named Randy, who is a walking Greek God to her. She likely has kleptomania (unable to resist the urge to steal). As mentioned, she entertains perversions (like pee and poop, and even some attractiveness, for lack of a better word, to the underage boys at the prison) because at least it’s some modicum of intimacy and love, neither of which she’s ever had. All of these reasons made the first 70 or so pages not exactly “pleasant” to read. We were fully within Eileen’s head through narration.

Then, along comes the Polk kid and Rebecca. Polk is a 14-year-old who brutally slashed his father’s neck with a knife, killing him. He’s been mute ever since. Rebecca is the new education counselor, and Eileen is immediately smitten. Rebecca replaces Randy; the Greek God sheen has turned to dust on him by comparison. I think in Rebecca, Eileen sees everything she wishes she could be: uninhibited (as opposed to wearing what she calls her “death mask” with other people, feigning the motions of day-to-day living), effortlessly exuding sexual energy, and affable with other people. Eileen clarifies that she’s not a lesbian, but she’s attracted to all of those sorts of characteristics she sees within Rebecca.

Of course, she doesn’t know Rebecca at all, and this is all projection.

The book really picks up speed from its slow burn when we learn more about why Eileen is the way she is, full of self-loathing and resentment to the world. Her father, in addition to being an alcoholic and verbally abusive, also used to pinch and prod her body as she developed, making comments. Her mother did nothing, and also was verbally abusive. They were both negligent. Growing up on Christmas Day, Eileen and her sister would get excited for Christmas gifts, only to learn their dad’s “present” for them was a lent-laced dollar from his pocket and their mother’s pencils. Short, nasty, and brutish. Then, her mother dies, I believe from cancer, in the same bed as Eileen. Certainly, her father’s not someone to turn to for grief support.

Again, Eileen’s never known love, or had it modeled for it, so, that’s why she finds it hard to be affable to other human beings. That is why she puts on her “death mask.” But crucially, I also don’t think it’s fair to judge Eileen for any of her aforementioned thoughts (stealing and stalking, which were actual actions, notwithstanding), even the perverse ones, because as she notes, “I had no idea how trivial my shameful thoughts and feelings really were.” In other words, most of us — even without having experienced the upbringing Eileen did — have negative, sometimes perverse, and so-called wrong thoughts. What makes them problematic is when we shame ourselves for having them in the first place, and/or if we act upon them.

That said, because of her gullibility, naivete, and need to be loved, Eileen follows Rebecca into the pits of hell, figuratively-speaking. Rebecca learns from the Polk boy that he was raped by his father, repeatedly. That’s why he killed his father. She further learns that his mother was complicit — not only did she know about the abuse, but she enabled it by giving him enemas. Unbeknownst to Eileen when she giddly goes to Rebecca’s ostensible house on Christmas Day — finally, she thinks, a good Christmas will be had! — Rebecca has kidnapped Mrs. Polk and tied her up in the basement to force a confession out of her. I figured something was amiss when Eileen showed up to a, what Eileen observes, “poor house.” And Rebecca seemed unable to find anything in the kitchen. I theorized that she broke into a random person’s house, though, not Mrs. Polk’s.

Anyhow, Eileen has a gun because it’s her dad’s gun, and the police made her take ownership of it. The same gun, mind you, that her dad would have next to his dinner plate during family dinners throughout Eileen’s childhood. Eileen and Rebecca use the gun to threaten a confession out of Mrs. Polk, but Rebecca accidentally drops the gun causing it to go off and Mrs. Polk to be hit.

This is all perfect to Eileen. She’s fantasized about being like the Polk boy and killing her father. And she’s also fantasized about escaping X-ville and going to New York City to start anew. The predicament Rebecca dragged her into presents the solution: Bring Mrs. Polk to her drunk father’s house, where he’ll be blamed for her death (after Eileen pulls the trigger), and then Eileen can abscond to New York City with Rebecca. It doesn’t work out like that, of course. Instead, Rebecca doesn’t come, and Eileen doesn’t pull the trigger. Rather, she takes Eileen to a random part of X-ville, and leaves her to die (or perhaps be found and survive?) in Eileen’s vehicle, whereupon she then hitchhikes to New York City.

All we know about Eileen’s life now, as the older version of her, where she goes by Lena, is that she’s happy and she loves herself. Finally. So, despite the horribleness she partook in at the age of 24, she found redemption, at least in how she views herself.

Moshfegh’s book is not one I would recommend lightly, and I would do so selectively. It’s not an easy read, but once it gets to where Moshfegh’s wants to take us, everything previously is seen in a new light and makes much more sense the way she did it. Eileen is one of those books that snuck up on me as being quite good, and will likely reverberate in my brain afterwards.