Eileen

The narrative this book pushes that for unlikeable people who become that way when forced into abuse and alcoholism and no upward mobility, that the solution is to respond in turn to situations you didn’t know you were about to be brought into is….weird.


The narrator frequently mentions that she came to be a happy and grateful person but it’s completely unbelievable when happiness has to find a way to survive in miserable situations like Eileen’s; I have no reason to believe there is a happy person hiding inside of Eileen when her response to her surroundings is this nihilistic contempt that completely drives her worldview until the very end when she is forced out of it.

Rebecca isn’t a believable character as to why she would put herself in the situation she does with Lees mother. If it were to be a commentary about the Moral satisfaction performance of out of touch Harvard grads to make themselves above the law that’d be one thing but the book doesn’t interrogate that at all. The ending situation is just all around unbelievable because of how two dimensional Rebecca is.

I just don’t really care for the narrative that this woman’s liberation from abuse and misery came from being a murder accomplice. What message does that put out? Even if that’s the point and Eileen is supposed to be the anti hero she is written to be, I feel no reason to be advocating or rooting for her when she has no interest (or at very least, meaningful opportunity) in improving herself internally and to the very end maintains that running away is the solution.

I can appreciate the craft that went into this novel but I'm starting to think Moshfegh's interests just aren't my interests. There is only so much time I can spend with a protagonist as desperately abused and ugly as Eileen. The vulnerability staged by her grotesquely awful father fulfilled its function to get me some kind of connection to the narrator as she continued to reveal herself in interesting ways throughout the book but I never really liked her and the obstacles thrown in front of her (presumably there to help reveal more of her character) felt exaggerated and without depth.

That was my issue with My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Ultimately, these books lack the depth they need to justify the sensational horrors they dwell in. These narratives stay on the surface of their inquiries and dazzle their readers with prose craftsmanship which is, admittedly, dazzling. Is that enough?

This might be my favorite book I read all year. Narrated from an older, wiser Eileen this honest, sordid and hopefully dark narrative takes place over a couple of weeks in a town so-named X-ville circa 1964. Eileen's unhappy mother passes on and she drops out of college to care for her abusive alcoholic father and finds herself several years into a post as an office lady in a heartless juvenile detention center. Her inner torment and sexual frustration is well balanced with the plot catalysts-a new inmate who has murdered his cop father and her other foil- a beautiful new education consultant named Rebecca. While these events built up to a spectacular and horrifying drama, the important part is always Eileen's battle with Eileen and her own empowerment.
Her 20-something angst, her self-absorption, her powerlessness and her futile rebellions make her in my mind a dark heroine for the ages. Depressed, sordid and triumphant she is everything a Becky Sharp or Jane Eyre could be and more.
I was blown away by the cinematography of this book- stark visions of her decrepit home, the stacks of national geographic and bowls of spit-out chocolate. Her barbie sister and filthy dad with his grey scrotum hanging out of his robe and his bottle of gin. The fleshy, gross office ladies and nasty pious warden. The crappy cozy bar and her toxic Dodge (what a great metaphor for her life that Dodge is.)