Eileen

wrong or terrible about my appearance. I was young and fine, average, I guess. But at the time I thought I was the worst ugly, disgusting, unfit for the world. In such a state it seemed ridiculous to call attention to myself. I rarely wore jewelry, never perfume, and I didn t paint my nails. For a while I did wear a ring with a little ruby in it. It had belonged to my mother.

My last days as that angry little Eileen took place in late December, in the brutal cold town where I was born and raised. The snow had fallen for the winter, a good three or four feet of it. It sat staunchly in every front yard, rolled out at the lip of every first-floor windowsill like a flood. During the day, the top layer of snow melted and the slush in the gutters loosened a bit and you remembered that life was joyful from time to time, that the sun did shine. But by afternoon, the sun had disappeared and everything froze all over again, building a glaze on the snow so thick at night it could hold the weight of a full-grown man. Each morning, I threw salt from the bucket by the front door down the narrow path from the porch to the street. Icicles hung from the rafter over the front door, and I stood there imagining them cracking and darting through my breasts, slicing through the thick gristle of my shoulder like bullets or cleaving my brain into pieces. The sidewalk had been shoveled by the next-door neighbors, a family my father distrusted because they were Lutheran and he was Catholic. But he distrusted everyone. He was fearful and crazy the way old drunks get. Those Lutheran neighbors had left a white wicker basket of cellophane-wrapped waxed apples, a box of chocolates, and a bottle of sherry by the front door for Christmas. I remember the card read, Bless you both.

Who really knew what happened inside the house while I was at work? It was a three-story colonial of brown wood and flaking red trim. I

novel. 'Funny awful' might be another one. I marveled at myself for enjoying the scenes I was witnessing, and wondered what dark magic the author had employed to make me smile at them.   NPR

If Jim Thompson had married Patricia Highsmith imagine that household they might have conspired together to dream up something like Eileen. It s blacker than black and cold as an icicle. It s also brilliantly realised and horribly funny. John Banville

[A] dark and unnerving debut. Publishers Weekly

It is in that gritty, claustrophobic atmosphere that Ms. Moshfegh s talents are most apparent. This young writer already possesses a remarkably sighted view into the bleakest alleys of the psyche. Wall Street Journal

Wonderfully unsettling first novel . . .  When the denouement comes, it s as shocking as it is thrilling. Part of the pleasure of the book (besides the almost killing tension) is that Eileen is mordantly funny . . . this tale belongs to both the past and future Eileen, a truly original character who is gloriously unlikable, dirty, startling and as ferociously human as the novel that bears her name. San Francisco Chronicle

Rife with dark emotions and twisted fantasies, Moshfegh's psychological thriller is the sinister account of the reclusive Eileen, whose prospects for escape from her abysmal life take a turn for the worse when a friendship with a coworker spirals into obsession." Oprah.com

Eileen swaddles the reader in its dark and sinister mood. Moshfegh's brilliant storytelling builds an almost sadistic level of suspense, so that you can't help but lean in and listen to the narrator, however despicable and repulsive her confession becomes. Sarah Hollenbeck, co-owner of Women & Children First bookstore, Chicago
 
Eileen is a singular read, dark and funny and full of oft-queasy truths, ones that may at first seem strange and disturbing, but then are not so far away from our own internal thoughts. Eileen is quiet, awkward and lonely. As Christmas approaches, she is desperate to leave her alcoholic father, her dismal home life and her mind-numbing job at a boys correctional facility. Enter her glamorous 'new friend' Rebecca and suddenly Eileen is set on a path towards inevitable change, a suspenseful ride to the end. Atmospheric, cinematic, and deliciously uncomfortably heartwarmingly pathetic in the best of ways. Melinda Powers, Bookshop Santa Cruz (also sent in to Indie Next)
 
Eileen is unlike anything I've read since, maybe, Patricia Highsmith: a wholly captivating look at a character you're drawn towards in a strange, inexplicable alliance and from whom you can't easily part. I find myself thinking about it still, months later, in the most unexpected ways. Mosfegh has a way with the kind of imagery that brings her world into terrible, precise emotional focus, and the book builds like a slow avalanche. What a pleasure to read! Camden Avery, The Booksmith, San Francisco

Tempting plot machinations aside, you should be reading Moshfegh because she writes incredible sentences, the kind that build and build to create a warped momentum you can t brake. They create a harsh, blackly humorous world, like Mary Gaitskill, but less grave and with more jokes. Gawker
 
Like The Woman Upstairs and Notes on a Scandal, Eileen turns on the symbiotic relationship between love and hate, hope and delusion, and for the reader repulsion and absolute absorption. New York Magazine

The climax of Eileen is bizarre, creepy and oddly satisfying. This novel does not fit neatly into a single genre. Its protagonist is unlikable but fascinating, and ultimately sympathetic. It is a masterly psychological drama that lingers, with a disquieting effect, in the reader's mind. Newsday
 
The young heroine if you can call her that of Ottessa Moshfegh s chilling debut is exactly the kind of woman whom noir authors tended to summarily ignore. Think of her as a Flannery O Connor character wandering around a Raymond Chandler novel . . . Moshfegh uses that carefully constructed foundation to build a truly shocking ending, one you ll never see coming. It s hard to believe she s a first-time novelist, so skillfully has she grafted disparate genre elements onto one another: psychological suspense, horror, obsession, and madness. Eileen is as twisted, dark, and unexpected as its title character.   Entertainment Weekly

In this masterful feat of suspense writing, she captures the distortions and complicities that poison families.   BBC.com
 
Eileen is a highbrow noir that introduces Ottessa Moshfegh as a talent to look out for. Bustle
 
If Shirley Jackson and Mary Gaitskill had a literary daughter, it might be Ottessa Moshfegh, whose unnerving debut is sure to gar­ner attention. Bookpage
 
Literary psychological suspense at its best.   Booklist (starred)
 
A woman recalls her mysterious escape from home in this taut, controlled noir about broken families and their proximity to violence. . . . The narrative masterfully taunts. . . . The release, when it comes, registers a genuine shock. And Moshfegh has such a fine command of language and her character that you can miss just how inside out Eileen's life becomes in the course of the novel, the way the 'loud, rabid inner circuitry of my mind' overtakes her. Is she inhumane or self-empowered? Deeply unreliable or justifiably jaded? Moshfegh keeps all options on the table. . . . A shadowy and superbly told story of how inner turmoil morphs into outer chaos. Kirkus (starred)