Her main function at the correctional facility is to write bizarre questionnaires to further tax distressed parents. Eileen is equally merciless when describing practically everyone else. There is a sister and an ancient suspicion of father and daughter incest but never mind. Those were the good times.”Īlthough Dad’s antics provide something of a demented sideshow at home, Eileen’s revulsion centres firmly on her body, its contents, her pitted skin, her smells and her various hangovers (she is no mean drinker herself). They occurred irregularly – maybe once or twice a week, at most – and rarely without assistance.” Yet as she is addicted to laxatives which assist her towards bathroom experiences which are “torrential, oceanic, as though all of my insides had melted and were now gushing out, a sludge that stank distinctly of chemicals and which, when it was all out, I half expected to breach the rim of the toilet bowl. “The movements of my bowels were a whole other story.

The narrative voice is neutral, even complacent there is no remorse or even a hint of regret while the blurring of the young and older selves is deeply dissatisfying.Įileen is the sort of girl who keeps a large mason jar by her cot up in the attic, should she need to urinate on those days when Dad is on the rampage downstairs. Indeed, what is even more baffling is how as fine a writer – and reader – as John Burnside could refer to it as “a modern masterpiece”.

One reason for persisting with this queasy, gratuitous, extended prologue of a novel is to attempt to discover why anyone would compare it with the work of Shirley Jackson or the great Flannery O’Connor. Just in case the reader forgets the vast sea of time, the narrator frequently repeats ‘back then’ as she tells a story that for all its gross detail and snide asides quickly proves tiresome – and tired. So now aged, wised-up Eileen recalls the humdrum week that led to her setting off for further adventures. Half a century has passed since she grew up in X-ville, a New England town. The book is full of similar carefully-staged, unfunny gags.Įileen Dunlop is 24 – or rather she’s not. He’s a retired cop but nowadays he enjoys “lobbing snowballs at children from our front porch”. Life for the eponymous messed-up narrator of this contrived, out-to- shock debut has been reduced to sharing a neglected house with her bereaved father, a drunk who spends most of his waking hours in his underwear.

Eileen by ottessa moshfegh