5/30/2023 0 Comments Eileen by ottessa moshfegh![]() ![]() ![]() Indeed, what is even more baffling is how as fine a writer – and reader – as John Burnside could refer to it as “a modern masterpiece”. One reason for persisting with this queasy, gratuitous, extended prologue of a novel is to attempt to discover why anyone would compare it with the work of Shirley Jackson or the great Flannery O’Connor. Just in case the reader forgets the vast sea of time, the narrator frequently repeats ‘back then’ as she tells a story that for all its gross detail and snide asides quickly proves tiresome – and tired. So now aged, wised-up Eileen recalls the humdrum week that led to her setting off for further adventures. Half a century has passed since she grew up in X-ville, a New England town. The book is full of similar carefully-staged, unfunny gags.Įileen Dunlop is 24 – or rather she’s not. He’s a retired cop but nowadays he enjoys “lobbing snowballs at children from our front porch”. ![]() Life for the eponymous messed-up narrator of this contrived, out-to- shock debut has been reduced to sharing a neglected house with her bereaved father, a drunk who spends most of his waking hours in his underwear. ![]()
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