Eileen is an accomplished, disturbing and creepily funny first novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, the latest darling of the Paris Review, which has published her stories and given her a prize. It recalls, half a century later, a week in the life of Eileen Dunlop, leading up to Christmas 1964.
Her mother, whom she loathed, has died some years ago, and at the age of 24 Eileen is living in a dreary New England town she calls ‘X-ville’ with her father. He’s a demented, gin-sodden retired cop whom she also loathes, and whom she is supposedly looking after, though her care is limited to shouting at him, maintaining his gin supply and hiding his shoes to prevent him from terrorising X-ville in his pursuit of imaginary ‘hoodlums’.
She works as a secretary in the local boys’ prison, where she drinks sweet vermouth from her locker, devises absurd questions for a ‘state questionnaire’ issued to visiting mothers (‘Do you believe there is life on Mars?’) and lusts after a guard called Randy, spending ‘many hours watching his biceps flick and pump’ as he turns the pages of his comic book.
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