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    Eileen
    Eileen
    Eileen
    Audiobook8 hours

    Eileen

    Written by Ottessa Moshfegh

    Narrated by Alyssa Bresnahan

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A lonely young woman working in a boys' prison outside Boston in the early 60s is pulled into a very strange crime, in a mordant, harrowing story of obsession and suspense, by one of the brightest new voices in fiction So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes-a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back. This is the story of how I disappeared. The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys' prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings. Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen's story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 18, 2015
    ISBN9781490673950
    Eileen

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    Reviews for Eileen

    3.5/5

    741 ratings62 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Relentless one -note grimness, extreme repetition dragging out the interminable setup to what is finally the actual plot, seemingly random paragraph structure jumping from plot exposition to pronouncements of the protagonist’s state of mind, with those pronouncements notably contradicting themselves several times — there really is little to recommend in this book. It is an interesting window into the restricted world of a single woman in that place and time, suburban Boston ca. 1964. But otherwise it is a chore to get through and unenjoyable throughout.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Amazing. Eileen is dark and relatable to such a degree that you feel a bit uncomfortable - especially for any woman who remembers the physical discomfort of puberty or had a strained relationship with a parental figure. The narration is spot on and very engrossing.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book was wonderful. It was so unique and uncomfortable. The beginning was fascinating with a lot of interesting characters and the main character is truly a treat. It feels like the author knows she’s writing in a sad and grim way but does not fight it but actually gives into it! Kinda lost me midway throughout the book cause I thought some of the choices were just so out of character but the ending got me back and I would give this book a 4.5 if this app would let me?
    • 4/5
      Absolutely unhinged, disgusting, and captivating.
    • 4/5
      Great necessities to adventure, knowledge, and escape with the ease of technology.
    • 5/5
      Ottessa Moshfegh's debut novel, Eileen, is classic noir. Harsh and unflattering, Eileen tells the story of a few days at the end of 1964, and the dramatic change those few days made in her life. At the start of the book, twenty-four year old Eileen has a terrible job as a secretary in a bleak detention center for boys and a terrible, filthy home with her brutal, alcoholic father. She dreams of escape, and has been saving for the day when she can leave the coastal Massachusetts town she's grown up in, plain, dull and over-looked, for a more passionate, vital life elsewhere. And, because this is noir, in walks the femme fatale. This isn't a pleasant novel. Eileen isn't likable. As the book is narrated from inside of her head, there's no way to avoid discomfort. When she isn't having naive, yet off-putting fantasies about one of the guards at the boys' home, she's busy feeling heartily sorry for herself. That is, until her life changes and she sees a way forward. It's not that Eileen becomes a more pleasant person to spend time with, but she does become more interesting. I do like noir and Eileen is a fantastically well-done entry into the genre. If there's a category of literary noir, this would fit right it. It sounds creepy to say this, but this book delighted me. If you are at all squeamish, you might want to pass on this though, which is not to say that it's overly graphic; it's just that uncomfortable scenes are described with such skill as to make them very real.
    • 5/5
      I loved the book! The characters were believable! Although, I wished Lee could have gotten out of jail and received counseling. The writer could have added more to the ending. For example, what happened to Rebecca? More storyline on Randy, Eileen sister and Eileen husbands.
    • 4/5
      Merry Christmas, everyone! Now for a review of the most non-Christmas-y Christmas book you can find. Only Otessa Moshfegh could write this. It's 1964 and Eileen is a 24 year old young woman in a crisis. Her mother has died and her father is a violent alcoholic ex-cop. She lives with her father in filth, eating nothing, never cleaning herself, wearing her dead mother's clothes, drinking too much, and taking laxatives. She works at the local juvenile detention center in a meaningless desk job. When a new, glamorous woman comes to work at the detention center, events are put in motion in the week leading up to Christmas - what they will lead to becomes a mystery. Seriously, Moshfegh pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable to say, especially by a woman author about a woman character, and I love it. Her writing is dark, sarcastic, and shocking. I imagine most people will be put off by her novels, but I love them.
    • 5/5
      This is a gritty deeply felt mesmerizing story. Ive read it before - the audiobook performance is outstanding, I enjoyed it again and saw new things in it. Not for nothing is Otessa Moshfegh thought to be extraordinary.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      One of my book club members recommended this book so we read it for our November meeting. On the back of the book Jeffrey Eugenides calls the author "a writer of significant control and range" and Rivka Galchen said "A scion of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Raymond Carver at once, Moshfegh transforms a poison into an intoxicant." Another review said she was "a writer's writer, and one of the most multitalented new voices to come along in years...Her prose is breathtaking, inventive, and electric." Obviously these reviewers saw something in this book that escaped me. I certainly didn't find the prose breathtaking and the poison never transformed into an intoxicant for me.Eileen is a twenty-four year old woman living in a small town in New England. She lives in her childhood home with her father, a retired policeman who is an alcoholic. Her mother had terminal cancer and Eileen came home from college to care for her and stayed after she died. She works in the office of a juvenile detention facility, a job that doesn't exactly fulfill her. Other than buy gin for her father she doesn't seem to go out but she also doesn't do much in the house. It's a mess as is the yard. The neighbours gossip about her and her father but because of the father's standing in the town they put up with the squalor. Eileen dreams of getting away but never seems to work up a definite plan. Then a new employee comes into the facility. Rebecca is beautiful and talks to Eileen. She even asks her to meet for a drink after work. Eileen can't quite believe that she finally has a friend but that seems to be the case. When Rebecca invites Eileen over on Christmas Eve it seems like the start of something that will finally get Eileen out of the town. And then it all goes horribly awry.I'm used to debut novels being a bit clunky but given the reviews I thought the writing would have been better. Instead there were at least two instances of double negatives that had me trying to figure out what the author meant. There were also several occasions when the author seemed to forget what she had said in a previous chapter. Then there's the character of Eileen who doesn't have a redeeming quality; I couldn't decide if she has depression or a psychosis or is just carrying on the alcoholism of her father. I think I have been generous in my rating of the book due mainly to the surprise ending.
    • 4/5
      Eileen is a piece of work. A sad and twisted piece of work, the product of a massively dysfunctional family and consequent extremely low self-esteem. Looking back on her life from the vantage point of fifty years in the future, her 24-year-old self was ripe for change. All she really needed was a catalyst. And that’s what Rebecca was, whatever else she might have been. In the cold days leading up to Christmas 1964, we watch Eileen deal with her lack of prospects, her alcoholic and abusive father, and her thwarted desire for a co-worker named Randy. If it weren’t for her active imagination, she’d have no life at all. But Rebecca changes all that and leads Eileen down a dark path to crisis and a sort of freedom.This is a fine piece of well-crafted first-person narrative fiction. Eileen is both more unpredictable that you’ll predict and darker than you’ll guess. The retrospective narration, surprisingly, does not diminish the tension as the noir aspects of the story develop. Indeed, that probably ratchets up the tension since it is very hard to anticipate where Eileen’s story will go. Rebecca, perhaps, is the more challenging character, more force of nature, even enigma. We never learn Rebeccas’s story, which as Eileen informs us, is only fair as this is Eileen’s story. As such, it is tragically gripping.Ottessa Moshfegh is a very fine writer indeed.Recommended.
    • 5/5
      While reading this, I was reminded of Claire Messud's comments when asked about her unlikeable heroine Nora. Like Nora, Eileen isn't likable--even less so. She lives a tightly circumscribed, dark existence in a dreary town. Her only life is internal--and bizarre at that. That doesn't stop her from being absolutely compelling. Moshfegh's writing is phenomenal; I could smell the dirt and grime through the pages.

      Not a pleasant read, but it captivated me.
    • 4/5
      This book was not what I was expecting. I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it. The writing is evocative in both beautiful and grotesque ways, the main character is fascinating, if completely maladjusted and the plot has a frightening logic and at times a dark humor to it. Bizarre and disturbing and incredibly compelling.
    • 4/5
      Utterly wonderful, very reminiscent of Shirley Jackson. Eileen Dunlop is a maladjusted 24 year old; her mother dead, her father an abusive alcoholic, her home a total mess. Absorbed to the point of obsession with herself, certain others find her repellent, she fantasizes vainly about everyone she meets . In her admin job at the local juvenile prison, she dreams of guard Randy - who never acknowledges her existence- but also the warden, the teen inmates...and gorgeous new head of education, Rebecca.Eileen writes looking back on her early life from a distant future, so we get the impression it all comes (fairly) good.But as the situation with Rebecca builds to an unexpected crescendo, one wonders how it can pan out.Very compelling; and Eileen, despite her weirdness, is 100% believable. You get, fully, where she's coming from. Have just borrowed the library's other two works by Ms Moshfegh.Memorable quote: "A house that is so well maintained, furnished with good-looking furniture of high quality, decorated tastefully, everything in its place, becomes a living tomb. People truly engaged in life have messy houses."
    • 4/5
      Well, Here’s a strange little story that completely absorbed me. It starts off weird and just gets weirder but in a gripping, coherent way. It wanders down some dark alleys and shows you things that you wish you’d never seen but it is so good that you don’t mind.

      It reminded me of Netflix series that I have never seen but probably will one day soon.

      Hard to classify, obviously fiction but where to after that? maybe that’s the sign of a good book when you know you have read something good but don’t really know what it was. Dark is a word that arises but with good feelings and not that bleakness that passes itself off as noir.

      Dunno really but if I was you I’d put this on your list.
    • 2/5
      If you’re after completely dysfunctional, unlikeable characters then try this book. I can usually enjoy novels where the characters are extremely flawed but not this one. My local library had given this a “crime” genre sticker but most of the book just concerns the lead up to a crime. So what kept me reading? This book had also been labelled a “thriller” (no, it wasn’t) but I was curious enough to want to find out what the crime had been. All know is the protagonist really made me curl my lip whilst reading about her.
    • 3/5
      This is the author's debut novel and I consider it a character study. The narrator and protagonist is Eileen who is an old lady as she tells us about a short time in her life when she was 24-years-old during the 1960's. Eileen hates herself and everything about her life which includes her home, her father, and her job. She has no friends so is lonely, angry about her life, and lives with her alcoholic father who constantly degrades her. They live in a filthy house, Eileen eats a poor diet, and has awful personal hygiene since she seldom bathes. Her wardrobe consists of her dead mother's clothes which don't fit her.There is no action in the one-half of this dark novel as it tells us about Eileen and everything that is disgusting and pathetic about her. I kept wondering why I continued reading it but I wanted to see if life got any better for Eileen. She works in an office at a juvenile boys' prison and one day Rebecca starts working there. Suddenly, Eileen's life changes as she and Rebecca become friends. I thought the last half of the novel made up for my putting up with the first half. There were twists and turns I didn't see coming.Be warned if you think about reading this book. While it's well-written and the characters (there aren't many) are well-developed, there are some very revolting aspects about Eileen and her life.
    • 3/5
      This is a 3 1/2 star for me... Thank you Ottessa Moshfegh, for writing a book that is dark and weird and looking at you out the corner of her eye from down the liquor store aisle, and mercifully does not involve beautiful women who drop the oddball act when they suddenly become "mommas" and vaginally convert themselves into redemptive figures.

      I find it totally REFRESHING to find a book that doesn't follow a formula and doesn't apologize for it. The main character is someone we probably all know but have never spoken to and I enjoyed my brief and scary ride with Eileen at the wheel. Reading this in a dark and dreary January was just what I needed to feel brooding and dirty.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating story of a depressed, emotionally vulnerable and unstable young woman, told from the perspective of the woman she becomes, looking back after fifty years. Even though the character of Eileen is dark and often disturbingly lost, this is a novel of hope, and a trail of literary breadcrumbs is sprinkled throughout, leading us out of the darkness. The novel is, in once sense brutally honest, but it is the honesty of someone who can look dispassionately on her past while at the same time recognizing that she can see herself more clearly in some ways, but also less clearly in others. All memory is haunted by time and experience. The narrator has to continually fight to keep from inserting herself into the narrative, and her presence reminds us that Eileen does survive this dark period, does in fact move forward in life. This I believe is a difficult task, to show us a snapshot of young Eileen, from the within the window of memory but simultaneously as an outsider. Fascinating and beautiful novel, but not for those who feel that a character must be likable for the read to be rewarding..
    • 1/5
      AWFUL. NO STARS.
    • 2/5
      Exquisitely tedious.
    • 4/5
      Ik heb het boek in de originele versie gelezen; dat doe ik meestal als ik de taal voldoende beheers.Het verhaal is virtuoos geschreven met een uitzinnige woordenweelde - het is een plezier om van een dergelijk talent te genieten.Het verhaal is er geen om vrolijk van te worden. Het sleept ook redelijk lang aan om tot iets van een doel te komen.Helaas vind ik de uiteindelijke apotheose een teleurstelling.Nominatie was terecht. Dat ze het niet gehaald heeft, is duidelijk eens je het boek uit hebt.
    • 4/5
      Really slow burn. It's all foreshadowing right up until something happens.

      Creepy and unnerving. It's one of those books that feels like a writing exercise in building tension, but there's enough there and enough held back to make it a successful read.
    • 5/5
      I haven't written a review in a few years, but "Eileen" by Ottessa Moshfegh is outstanding. Wow. Roll with it without expectations, and you'll be glad you did.
    • 4/5
      This is a really strange book. Eileen is an older woman looking back on her past and telling the story of when she left home. Her mother died, her father is an alcoholic who treats her like shit and she works at a juvenile prison. Most of the story revolved around what is going on in Eileen's head, she has odd thoughts at times that can be uncomfortable, but also very honest. The actual plot of her leaving is very loose and not the main focus, the book is not plot driven at all basically, definitely character oriented and Eileen is an interesting character. There is a mystery feel to it because we know she is leaving home, but don't know why and we are reading to find out.
    • 4/5
      Eileen was the first novel by Moshfegh and I just read this a few weeks after reading her new book. I enjoyed this book more. It was a disturbing subject matter. It is about a 24 year old womean(1964) who lives with her alcoholic father, works in a juvenile prison and had a deceased alcoholic mother. She lives in a town outside Boston and the book is told by the older Eileen 50 years in the future. The story deals with her in the week before she leaves home. The writing is excellent and we get a great insight into the mind of a self-loathing woman who had a terrible childhood, no friends, and no love. She is a product of her upbringing. As a character study the book worked but what elevated it was a simple plot surrounding the events that led to her leaving home. I found the last half of the book moved quickly as we got into the events that created her exit. If you can deal with the subject matter, then this is a worthwhile book by a very talented author. What is scary is that there are so many people out there like Eileen where life is a real struggle. It makes your appreciate your own.
    • 3/5
      The build up is very slow, but it is so much fun trying to understand the mind of Eileen. What a unique and strange character and written so honestly that at times I found myself thinking...yea, I get that. (not sure what that says about me) If you don't mind slow moving and a lot of narrative then I would recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      Eileen, the first-person narrator of this novel, is a 24 year old woman who lives with her alcoholic father in a boring town, and who works in a juvenile correctional. She’s obsessed with herself, her body and with her unhappy life, in which the highlight is her (unrequited) love toward one of the young guards in the correctional. Everything will change when beautiful and perfect Rebecca appears in her life.With Eileen as pathetic protagonist, this could have been a bleak and dramatic story, but the book turns out to have plenty of humor (dark, but humor nevertheless) and the plot has some unexpected turns in the third part of the book, turning to be nearly a thriller. Eileen is perfectly developed character, and though she’s ridiculous, despicable, pitiable… she’s also endearing and magnetic at the same time. Maybe this book is not for everyone, but in my case it was worth the time I spent reading it.
    • 4/5
      Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh is not the sort of book to fit neatly into a genre, this is a dark, at times distasteful portrait of a woman who has a lot going on underneath her deliberately calm, unemotional exterior. The book is told through her own words and she doesn’t hold much back. She tells us that she hates just about everybody, and she also makes it very clear that this is a story about her breaking away from the bleak life she is living. At 24, she is living with her alcoholic, verbally abusive father in a filthy, falling apart house. She doesn’t cook or clean or look after her father other than to control him by supplying him with liquor and hiding his shoes so he can’t wander about. She works in the office of a boys’ reformatory but she hates her co-workers and spends most of her time building fantasies about them. When a new, glamorous employee is hired, Eileen becomes focused on her and believing that a friendship with this woman will transform her life, instead she is drawn into something both dark and dangerous.Eileen is not an easy read. The author however can write, her descriptions are evocative but Eileen’s world is both offensive and unpleasant. I felt like I needed a long shower after reading this book. It is in turns ugly and depressing but occasionally humorous and original. While for me, the thriller aspect of the story didn’t work, the character study of this unusual woman was superb.
    • 4/5
      24-year-old Eileen Dunlop, the eponymous anti-heroine of Ottessa Moshfegh's astonishing, often shocking, sometimes hilarious first novel, is a young woman with—if she is to be believed, which is often not the case—nothing to lose. It is 1964, and nondescript Eileen lives with her paranoid, alcoholic ex-cop father in the aromatic squalor of a neglected house in suburban "X-ville," a New England commuter town. Eileen's pragmatic and emotionally withholding mother is dead (cancer), and her father has nothing better to do than drink himself stupid day after day, rail against the hoodlums and gangsters he believes are out to get him, and criticise his daughter. Not that Eileen cares what he says. She readily admits that she's a mess, that she could be keeping the house clean but chooses not to, that she could have done any number of things but can't be bothered. After watching her mother die and going to work at a juvenile detention centre for boys called Moorehead, Eileen is happy to simply mark the passage of time fantasizing erotic encounters with a guard named Randy, keeping her father well supplied with gin, and plotting her escape to the big city. The story is narrated by a much older Eileen who is looking back on a crucial period in her life. The mature Eileen has lived a full life, and reflects upon the frequently shameful and unhealthy antics of her younger self with a mix of disgust and disbelief. In 1964, as Christmas approaches, Eileen looks forward to another dreary holiday with her father, both of them getting drunk and sleeping the days away. Enter Moorehead's new counselor, Rebecca Saint John, a young, fashionably dressed woman of preternatural poise and beauty who steals Eileen's heart and displaces the oblivious Randy in her fantasies. Rebecca awakens in Eileen a realization that somewhere within her there lurks a better version of herself, and provides the incentive for her to finally set her escape plan into motion. In Eileen's febrile imagination, she and Rebecca run off to New York City together and have all sorts of adventures. Needless to say, this fantasy fails to materialize and Eileen's escape from X-ville takes place hurriedly under unforeseen and less than ideal circumstances. Ottessa Moshfegh has written a highly original and mesmerizing first novel that recalls Flannery O'Connor at her most ungodly. In Eileen Dunlop, she has created a reckless, selfish, down and dirty protagonist who behaves atrociously and has no respect for anything, including herself, but who is a constant source of cringing fascination for the reader. Many publications have tagged Moshfegh as a writer to watch, an assessment that, based on this evidence, is completely justified.