Eileen - Ottessa Mosfegh
“Eileen” written by Ottessa Moshfegh is a slow-burn thriller that follows a young woman who works in a boy's prison as she unknowingly gets roped into an illegal scheme by a fellow prison employee. The illegal scheme in question does not occur until the last 30 pages of the book, everything before that is a long, drawn-out characterization of our protagonist Eileen, and how she ended up here. These 200 or so pages should have been used to build suspense for what’s to come, but instead, Moshfegh fills them with shock value and grotesque ideation, which she then uses as a replacement for the plot. She goes out of her way to paint a self-absorbed insufferable girl who I couldn't care less about by the end of the book. The ending, where Eileen realizes she's been incriminated in her co-workers' act and has no choice but to run away from home is riveting and shows off Mosfeghs skill for writing intense and gripping scenes that sweep the reader off their feet and leaving them just as confused as the protagonist. Unfortunately, this is the only place in this book we get to experience this brilliance, and it ends up being overshadowed by a bigger problem.
I gave this book a read after finishing " My Year of Rest and Relaxation”, another book by Moshfegh that also has a young and troubled female protagonist. Moshfegh has a talent for creating these amazing anecdotes that give her characters life, and then immediately murdering your interest in them through her odd characterization. She seems to confuse being flawed, with being morally incoherent. Her “unlikeable female protagonists” are not unlikeable because they refuse to adhere to what society expects of them, or because they directly contrast the quiet, shy, and mousy trope of usual female protagonists, it’s because they’re bad people.
Her habit of writing entitled, racist, and ignorant women and then pawning them off as faulty people who haven't grown to learn the true beauty and meaning of life is not only tiring but harmful. In comparison to books like “Gone Girl” where your female protagonist acts out of revenge, fear, or hurt; Moshfegh's characters don’t even act on anything. They just brew in their entitlement and flaws, which prevents them from being able to look within themselves to solve these problems. Protagonists like Elieen give young women with victim complexes refuge. They see these women who do and say terrible things and instead of using them as an example of how not to act, they instead look up to them. They hail them as what a woman should be, just as bad if not worse than a man.
Personally, I’m tired of trying to be forced to sympathize with women who have no regard for others, simply because they’re battling a low-grade depressive disorder. Books like Elieen that perpetuate this idea are feeding into a bigger societal problem and making women secure in actions they know are harmful. As someone who has been on the receiving end of people like them, books like these don’t amuse me. They only make me more fearful.
