Eileen by Ottessa MoshfeghMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
I got a copy of this one from Netgalley. I was quite desperate to get into the Booker longlist, but up till now I have only got as far as this one. And, all I can say is... I'm worried about what lies ahead with the rest of the nominees.
Last year's Man Booker longlist had its fair share of depressingly melancholic reads. People still can't seem to get over A Little Life, and well, it seems to me that this book is an attempt to fill that 'A Little Life' quota for the year.
Eileen Dunlop is a 24-year-old woman living in the back of beyond with her drunk, abusive father. She wiles away her time working at the detention centre as a kind of secretary, fantasising about getting away, her colleague Randy and generally murdering everyone in her vicinity. All she needs is a push in the right direction.
“That is what I imagined life to be-one long sentence of waiting out the clock.”
She seems to be suffering from an array of psychological disorders, including OCD, severe PTSD, Stockholm Syndrome, Anorexia and Depression.
This woman is not a likeable character. She doesn't have to be. But what I hate is that the author lets her get away with being a mean-spirited, self-obsessed, self-pitying loser. She is allowed to be all of that as long as someone, maybe the author herself, calls her out on it.
The first several chapters of the book wallow in grave self-pity - some of which we understand, others we do not. Eileen hates because she can, and we're expected to support her for it.
She is obsessed with her body. It is of course thin and perfect, but oh how ugly she is, how ugly she feels. She felt she was bloated, and big and no one would love her. Honestly, no one loves this character because she isn't nice! But the author doesn't seem to care, the author lets her continue feeling overweight, even though she is skin and bones. And what is the fallout of that? She is cruel and mean to anyone who is large. She's awful to them, which makes me wonder what the author's problem is. Why so much body-shaming? It's disgusting! Authors need to do better. Get over this!
Because Eileen is female, her obsessions therefore must include the perceived imperfections of her body. If this was a self-pitying male character, he'd worry about not being fit, yet, wouldn't give a hoot that he didn't look like Chris Evans, and he'd still get action with pretty ladies/lads!
Insert image of Chris Evans to calm down.
Maybe all this body pitying is more realistic, but it jars when we are constantly reminded by the author that Eileen is perfect looking, but hey, she needed to put on make-up, where dresses and be all prissy to get any attention. Just once I would like an author to write about a large female character, who is a real person with flaws and faults and who has a VALID reason to worry that she won't get a partner because society is evil and has conditioned us to find only a particular kind of shape beautiful.
Moshfegh is a short story writer, whose first full-length novel is 'Eileen'. It comes through that she is not used to the long form of literature. The entire book is a prolonged repetition of its initial paragraphs. From time to time older Eileen's voice will scoff at her younger self, but never in a self-deprecating or embarrassed way. The author obviously loves Eileen, which is probably why she tries to drive home the point that Eileen has it tough. All it does is drive home the fact that Eileen is a horrible person with daft opinions.
Despite coming from a state with a high number of psychiatrists, and being in therapy herself, the author, through Eileen, strikes down the entire science of psychology throughout the book. Example below:
“I don't trust those people who poke around sad people's minds and tell them how interesting it all is up there. It's not interesting. My mother was mean and that dog was nice. One doesn't need a college degree.”Say what?
And this is apparently how psychologists should be treated:
“People in that profession, I'd say, should be watched very closely. If we were living several hundred years ago, my guess is they'd all be burned as witches.”So would you, because you're awful! Come on, Eileen.
I don't know what psychologists did to the author, but this is why you should never get on writers' bad sides - they trash you in their books and take your profession along with it. Unbelievable stuff!
None of the other characters really come alive, aside from maybe the father. He isn't nice either, but again, no one calls him out on it. In fact, his sister judges Eileen for not taking better care of her father. I will never understand why characters in books and films never seem to pick fault with the drunk, but always his family who seemingly isn't taking care of him or his house. If he didn't decide that the bottle was his friend then his children wouldn't have to take care of him. His children aren't supposed to take care of him, it's the other way around.
Also, I like how this is quite different from how the main girl in 'The Girl on the Train' is treated - everyone expects her to get on with her life and to make it happen herself. They're not picking faults with other people, they're calling her out on her drinking, and stating point blank that it is the reason why her marriage ended. What is this double-standard nonsense? It maybe realistic, but the whole point of art is to shine a light on how biased and discriminatory real world practices are and make a comment on it. Don't just show us this is what happens, make a statement about why it shouldn't!
The entirety of the 200-odd pages of self-pitying climaxes at a ridiculous Hitchcockian twist. People are likening this book to 'The Girl on the Train' and 'Gone Girl', but you know why those books, despite their flaws, worked better? It's because the plot and the action walked in nearer the beginning or middle of the book. Here the plot gets to us on page 212, and that's being too kind. The case of the Leonard Polk boy committing fratricide is the peg that got the author started on this book, and it is the book's culmination, but the bread crumbs scattered throughout 262 pages do not lead up to any of it. There is no plot development, only plot devices.
The book needed a very strong editor, one who could slash the repeats and add in some substance. Perhaps they could have evened out the body-shaming with some confidence boosting conversations about differences being accepted as beautiful. The vocabulary in the book is also found wanting at times.
I am shocked and surprised that this book has made it on to the longlist because it is an utterly poor representation of the literary fiction genre. Constantly repetitive, it is a story that goes nowhere, and neither does its character. Eileen doesn't grow in the book; not organically anyway. When she meets the perfect Rebecca (but of course she's perfect), we have to be told by the author that their friendship has bolstered her confidence. It doesn't come naturally, nor is it shown naturally.
The author also often undoes her own work by putting in asides and comments by the older Eileen. It tries its best to balance younger Eileen's self-obsession, yet it makes it more telling than showing.
Is Eileen crazy - no, because scientifically, crazy isn't a state of being. She does suffer many psychological issues, a lot of which are brought on by her difficult childhood and the hardship of her adult life. Yet, none of it gives her the right to be cruel, which she is, even though she doesn't act on it; at least while we are reading anyway.
I really hope this was the low-end of the longlist choices, because if the others are worse, this exercise won't really be worth it. Two stars is being too kind to it.
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