There’s something perversely hypnotic about following a narrator who openly acknowledges their own repulsiveness. In “Eileen,” Ottessa Moshfegh’s brilliantly unsettling debut novel, we meet one of contemporary literature’s most unapologetically squalid protagonists: twenty-four-year-old Eileen Dunlop, a woman so consumed by self-loathing that reading her story feels like watching someone slowly peel off their own skin.
The novel, set during a frigid December week in 1964 in a coastal New England town (which Eileen calls “X-ville”), chronicles the final days before Eileen’s dramatic escape from her stifling existence. Moshfegh creates a claustrophobic world where Eileen is trapped between two prisons: her job as a secretary at “Moorehead,” a juvenile correctional facility for boys, and her role as reluctant caretaker to her alcoholic, delusional father—a former police officer whose deteriorating mental state manifests in paranoid ravings about “hoodlums” and “the mob.”
What makes “Eileen” so discomfiting yet impossible to put down is Ottessa Moshfegh’s unflinching commitment to her protagonist’s nauseating inner life. Eileen’s narrative voice—told from the perspective of her older, wiser self looking back after fifty years—catalogues bodily functions and physical discomforts with clinical precision. Her focus on excretion is particularly unsettling; she describes her constipation in vivid detail, her reluctance to shower, and her habit of keeping a dead mouse in her glove compartment as a talisman.
Masterful Atmosphere of Cold and Decay
Moshfegh excels at creating an atmosphere that mirrors Eileen’s internal desolation. The X-ville winter is brutal, with snow piled in dirty heaps and icicles hanging like daggers from rooftops. The Dunlop household exists in a state of suspended decay:
After my mother died, we never sorted or put her things away, never rearranged anything, and without her to clean it, the house was dirty and dusty and full of useless decorations and crowded with things, things, things everywhere. And yet it felt completely empty. It was like an abandoned home, its owners having fled one night like Jews or gypsies.
This physical environment becomes a perfect externalization of Eileen’s psychological state—stagnant, frozen, and quietly rotting beneath the surface. In one particularly telling scene, Eileen describes how she uses a mason jar in the attic when she can’t be bothered to go downstairs to use the bathroom.
The Catalyst: Rebecca Saint John
The narrative gains momentum with the arrival of Rebecca Saint John, a beautiful, sophisticated woman who joins Moorehead as its new director of education. Rebecca represents everything Eileen is not—confident, stylish, seemingly liberated from societal expectations. Eileen’s immediate infatuation with Rebecca veers between admiration and envy, eventually developing into something more complex and unsettling.
What makes this relationship so compelling is how it exposes Eileen’s desperate need for connection, validation, and escape. When Rebecca invites Eileen for drinks at a bar, then later to her home for Christmas Eve, Eileen’s hunger for friendship overrides her better judgment. The relationship becomes the conduit for Eileen’s criminal complicity and eventual flight from X-ville.
Psychological Precision
Moshfegh demonstrates exceptional psychological acuity throughout the novel. Eileen’s obsessive thoughts, her bizarre coping mechanisms, and her stunted emotional development are rendered with unflinching precision. Consider how she describes her fear of being seen:
I still had that pubescent fear that when people looked at me, they could see through my clothes. I suspect nobody was fantasizing about my naked body, but I worried that when anyone’s eyes cast downward, they were investigating my nether regions and could somehow decipher the complex and nonsensical folds and caverns wrapped up so tightly down there between my legs.
This blend of self-consciousness, shame, and barely acknowledged sexual curiosity perfectly captures the paradoxical nature of Eileen’s character—simultaneously repressed and preoccupied with the body’s most primal aspects.
Crime and Moral Ambiguity
While marketed as a psychological thriller, “Eileen” by Ottessa Moshfegh subverts genre expectations. The crime that ultimately propels Eileen’s escape doesn’t occur until the final quarter of the novel, and even then, it unfolds in unexpected ways. Without revealing too much, the climactic sequence involving Rebecca, Eileen, and a third party demonstrates Moshfegh’s skill at creating morally ambiguous scenarios where readers may find themselves reluctantly sympathizing with deeply questionable actions.
The novel’s slow burn allows Moshfegh to fully establish Eileen’s psychological landscape before introducing the catalyst that will change her life forever. By the time the crime occurs, we understand Eileen so thoroughly that her decisions, however disturbing, feel almost inevitable.
Strengths and Weaknesses
What Works Brilliantly:
Character Development: Eileen is one of the most fully realized protagonists in recent fiction—thoroughly unpleasant yet strangely sympathetic.
Setting: The oppressive winter atmosphere of X-ville creates a tangible sense of entrapment.
Psychological Realism: Moshfegh’s unflinching examination of Eileen’s disturbed psyche never feels exploitative or gratuitous.
Dual Perspective: The narrative voice balances the young Eileen’s tormented perspective with her older self’s more measured reflections.
Prose Style: Moshfegh’s writing is precise, vivid, and intentionally discomfiting.
Where It Sometimes Falters:
Pacing: Some readers may find the first half of the novel, with its deep dive into Eileen’s daily routines and fantasies, somewhat repetitive.
Character Believability: Rebecca occasionally feels more like a plot device than a fully formed character, her motivations sometimes murky beyond serving as Eileen’s catalyst.
Resolution: The abrupt ending may leave some readers wanting more closure, though this appears to be Moshfegh’s intention.
Literary Context
“Eileen” by Ottessa Moshfegh exists in a rich tradition of novels featuring unreliable, disturbed narrators. The comparison to early Vladimir Nabokov (particularly “Lolita”) feels apt in terms of the seductive narrative voice that draws readers into a morally questionable perspective. There are also clear echoes of Shirley Jackson’s explorations of isolated women unraveling under psychological pressure.
Readers familiar with Moshfegh’s later work, particularly “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” (2018), will recognize her preoccupation with female protagonists who reject societal expectations in radical ways. Both novels feature women who are, in different ways, determined to escape conventional existence, though the methods and circumstances differ dramatically.
Final Assessment
“Eileen” by Ottessa Moshfegh is not a novel for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. Moshfegh tests the reader’s tolerance for the uncomfortable and the unseemly, demanding we confront aspects of human experience typically swept under the rug of polite fiction. Yet there’s a strange beauty in this unflinching honesty, a kind of literary courage that feels increasingly rare.
The novel’s greatest achievement lies in making us care about a character who, by conventional standards, should repel us. By the time Eileen makes her escape from X-ville, we’re deeply invested in her fate—not because we necessarily like her, but because we’ve come to understand the forces that shaped her.
Moshfegh has created a masterful character study that doubles as a suspenseful slow-burn thriller. While some aspects of the plot resolution feel slightly contrived, and the pacing occasionally lags, the sheer visceral power of Eileen’s voice makes this a standout debut that announces Moshfegh as a fearless literary talent unafraid to explore the darkest corners of human experience.
For Readers Who Enjoyed:
“My Year of Rest and Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh
“Notes on a Scandal” by Zoë Heller
“The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath
“Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
“We Have Always Lived in the Castle” by Shirley Jackson
These haunting, often uncomfortable passages perfectly encapsulate the voice that makes “Eileen” by Ottessa Moshfegh such a memorable addition to contemporary literature—a distinctive blend of self-loathing, dark humor, and unexpected insight that signals Moshfegh as a writer unafraid to venture into the most unsettling territories of the human psyche.