Eileen - Ottessa Moshfegh
A review of Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel focused on voice, self-contempt and a tightly confined interior life.
265 pages · Kindle edition · August 2015
Quite a gal
Eileen drew me in through voice and control rather than plot mechanics. I came to it after the grotesque, almost feral sprawl of Lapvona, curious whether Ottessa Moshfegh’s appetite for the grotesque could survive close confinement. What I found was a far more contained but equally uncompromising interior study. The narration stays tight inside a mind shaped by self-loathing, routine and watchfulness, and it never softens the view. The risk is that such a voice could become indulgent or monotonous; instead, it tightens.
That self-contempt, especially for someone only twenty-four, felt recognisable rather than exaggerated. Much of it registers through the body: secret laxative rituals carried out in a cold basement, a night of drinking ending with vomit beside a parked car. These moments felt absorbing rather than shocking, part of how this consciousness experiences the world. The characters remain deliberately unflattering yet sharply legible, the writing precise and disciplined. The novel closes cleanly, with release rather than redemption - a freedom that feels structural, not sentimental.