Updated review, July 2018This is a deadly, pointed book. I was a little afraid to re-read it, worried that it wouldn't live up to my memory. But it did. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the world who loves this book and so I clutch onto it, rather preciously, and feel wounded when I hear vitriolic hatred towards it. I wondered, as I read this weirdly wonderful, obscenely honest little book for the second time, why people hate it so much. I feel like saying to them, in a Jack Nicholson v...

If you enjoy reading extensive accounts of bowel movements from characters that love to wallow in self-pity, then this so-called "literary thriller" is the book for you. I'm afraid I didn't care for it very much.The narrator is looking back on a seminal week in her life as a 24-year-old. Growing up in a drab New England town she dubs X-ville, Eileen leads a miserable existence. She lives in a filthy house with her alcoholic father, who insults her at every opportunity. She has major body issues....

ON SALE FOR $1.99 THIS WEEK! May 17, 2018...if you can prepare yourself for some disgusting self-care and a bizarre protagonist, the story will wow my fellow oddballs. If you prefer commercial fiction, then stick to Lee Child and Jodi Picoult... Ottessa is not your writer.-----------------------------Apparently, Im a total softie for a sociopathic narrator. When the person whispering in my ear is pathologically self-absorbed, that lovely and hideous freak usually has me wrapped around his little...

UPDATE: Kindle $1.99 special today!!!!!!!! I listened to the audiobook --but others who 'read' it also gave this book high reviews. Its a book I'll never forget --but read 'many' reviews!!! --to see if its for you! I loved it!Audiobook-- Eileen.....( LOOKING BACK at her life....when she was 24 years of age living in Massachusetts)....At the start of the story she tells us in a week - she will run away....Plus we know Eileen has a menial secretary type job at a boys correctional residence. AT AGE...

Does a book need to be inoffensive in order for you to enjoy it? It may seem an academic question at heart, but it's exactly the question you'll need to ask yourself before reading Ottessa Moshfegh's polarizing Eileen. If you like your narratives clean, or you want your lead to have unambiguous morality, or you demand a likeable character, then Eileen is unlikely the book for you. Of course, if you are letting those things hold you back then you'll miss a swath of excellent literature of which E...

Updated Review: December 23-27, 2017I can't believe I didn't like this the first time I read it. Although I do remember enjoying the writing style but not being that impressed with the actual storyline—and I still stand by that opinion: the story isn't the most impressive part of this book. But I think Eileen is one of the most fascinating, confusing, and well constructed characters I've ever read about. It definitely helped to read her short story collection to get an even better idea of Moshfe...

I couldn't be bothered to deal with fixing things. I preferred to wallow in the problem, dream of better days.this book takes place in the early sixties and is about a woman named eileen dunlop, a tightly wound and inwardly unstable twenty-four-year old woman who works at a juvenile correctional facility for boys and lives with her alcoholic father in a shambles of a house. it chronicles the events of one week in a frigid new england winter after which she will unexpectedly leave town, never to

5 "repugnant, vile, fierce, exhibitionistic" stars !!! 10th Favorite Read of 2016 I have never been so reluctant to give a book 5 stars. This is a book that directs all its murky gaze on the darkness that lurks within women. Ms. Moshfegh slowly and repetitively dissects Eileen into all her gory parts from the darkness of her sexual fantasies that include post-pubescent boys, unattainable women, to visualizing her coworkers engaging in sex that both disgusts and titilates her. Eileen's psyche is...

3.5 stars If you didn't like The Girl on the Train, you certainly won't like this. If you're interested in characters over plot, however, this is another solid entry into a excellent year for psychological thrillers. Eileen is one of the most pitiable and despicable characters I've ever read; she is not only neurotically self-absorbed and insecure and suffering from severe sexual and emotional repression, but she's also prone to feverishly obsessive behavior. She lewdly fixates on a muscular gua...

Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut novel Eileen sounded like a great and intriguing read. The 1960’s, a girl’s escape from a boring life in a small New England town, a mysterious crime – there are lots of interesting plot points going for this book, which will be released in August 2015.Unfortunately, this does not necessarily translate to the writing. Don’t get me wrong, Eileen Dunlop is an interesting yet thoroughly unlikable character, and her insights into her life range from bland and depressive to c...

SELF-LOATHING AS A FORM OF ARTIn the past few years quite by chance I have come across a rich seam of female self-loathing in fiction. You might think that women writers would be all about positive tales of overcoming the bleakness, and I’m sure many are, but not in these books: Grotesque by Natsuo Kirino – the unnamed un-beautiful older sister spends her whole life hating everybody especially herselfA Day Off by Storm Jameson – the unnamed middle-aged alcoholic frump spends a day hating everybo...

Do not read Eileen if you don't like repulsive characters, if you're turned off by graphic descriptions of bodily smells and filth, or if you like your novels to be action packed. Do read Eileen if you like dark character studies and can stand to be strung along for most of a book before getting to the crux of what is being foreshadowed. Eileen -- the narrator -- looks back at a few days in 1964 when she was 24 years, and living a nasty life in a small town with her nasty father working at a nas...

"What if she could smell that I was menstruating, and that I hadn’t washed? What if she smelled it clear as day but didn’t say anything? How, then, would I know whether or not she’d smelled it, and how ought I act to pretend I didn’t know Rebecca smelled it?"Welcome to the anxiety-ridden mind of Eileen. Eileen lives in a perpetual fantasy. Her words, not mine. She will undoubtedly go down in herstory as one of the most memorable characters I have ever read. This is an "inside the head of a damag...

EILEEN did not work for me.....at all.EILEEN Dunlap is a 24 year old disturbed young woman. She is unhappy, has atrocious nutrition, personal hygiene and lives like a pig. She has no self-worth, her thoughts for the most part are nasty and morbid and she is trapped in a forlorn life she detests with a passion.......until an 'inane' opportunity to make a change presents itself.EILEEN has a stagnant, (almost nonexistent) plot that goes nowhere and a repulsive character analysis that seemed to go o...

This is a very short book, and yet it took me 4 days to read it.I'm the level of book nerd where I try to finish a book per day every day that I can. It's the first item on every to-do list I've ever made. It is the biggest factor in my priorities being as screwed up and weird as they are.And yet this teeny tiny book took me down.This is due to the fact that it made me so viscerally uncomfortable I had to read it in approximately 42 separate sittings. I spent several days chugging glasses of wat...

They call Moshfegh's protagonists "unlikeable" and I have a real problem with that. What they are is honest, brutally, and clearly in a socially unacceptable way. Well, I loved Eileen Dunlop. Both Eileens, the 74 years old narrator Eileen and the 24 years version who the story is about. The story old Eileen tells us starts in 1964 when she was a mentally and sexually abused 24 year old motherless, very damaged young woman and although there is a plot, the book mostly requires you to be comfortab...

Dear Eileen, I wanted you to know that I didn’t fall in love with Eleanor Oliphant as half of the world did. I didn’t believe her story. I didn’t believe her damn tropical plant in the corner of her living room! I just didn’t. But you, Eileen, I felt you were so real, so human and your story really blew my mind. What a thought provoking story you had to tell. I didn’t think you were weird, I just thought you were very clever by trusting me to be clever as well. Thank you, Eileen. For everything....