Ottessa Moshfegh has shown time and again that she feels no shyness towards the illustration of bodily fluids. In her debut publication, McGlue, the title character constantly has something or other oozing out of him, either from his mouth, the crack in his skull or his “nether regions”. Moshfegh creates a slew of characters you probably wouldn’t bring home to your parents.
In her short story, “No Place for Good People,” a featured piece in the Paris Review, Moshfegh describes Paul, an obese mentally-challenged man who routinely overeats to the point of vomiting and publicly flaunts his masturbation habits. In another story, The Weirdos, Moshfegh gives us a meth-addicted, delusional actor and a rotten-toothed neighbor with a third eye tatted on her forehead. Then we have McGlue, an exceedingly desperate and reckless alcoholic with a liking for “nasty, wrench-pussied women” and a tendency to poke and prod his brain through a gaping wound in his head.
Now we have Eileen, a helplessly pathetic and pitiable young woman working at a boys’ juvenile penitentiary in the depths of a Massachusetts winter in the 1960s. The title character has no issue laboriously detailing the inadequacies of her body, from her off-putting “death mask”, down her frail and jagged frame, to her unexplored, despairing genitalia. Though it feels at times as if our protagonist is overly critical of herself and her plight, Eileen’s lot in life was largely decided by the world around her – and the world that Moshfegh paints is a gruesome, desolate one.
Every visceral depiction in Moshfegh’s new novel made my stomach curl. Eileen’s father is an ex-cop and morbid alcoholic (a character Moshfegh seems to be familiar with) who spends his days and nights in a broken-down recliner in the kitchen, shoeless. He swings the oven door open to keep warm, and opens the refrigerator when he gets the sweats. Eileen subsists on a scarce diet of moldy break smothered in mayonnaise, liquor and, occasionally, peanuts. She goes long swaths of time without emptying her bowels and proceeds to devour half a bottle of laxatives, relieving weeks worth of bloody bile in one painfully exhaustive endeavor.
Eileen’s world is not just characterized by disturbing scenery, but also is full of hatred. Throughout the lengthy, painful process of her death, Eileen’s mother was a scornful woman who never showed her daughter any affection. Before and after the death of his wife, Eileen’s father endlessly criticizes his daughter on her unappetizing appearance, constantly comparing her to her older, physically attractive sister Joanie, who ran away from the family early. She works with a pair of catty older women who, like everyone else, enjoy tormenting her. The love of her life is a robust security guard named Randy, a man who flaunts his bulging crotch and likely has no knowledge of Eileen’s existence. Aside from this cast of bitter personas, there is almost nobody in Eileen’s life.
That is, until the much-awaited Rebecca Saint John arrives to Moorehead Juvenile Detention Center to commence her duties as a social worker. Rebecca is an elegant, stylish redhead with a Harvard education. Eileen confuses her for a movie star, assuming she is there in some type of USO role to entertain the imprisoned boys, and describes her as the most beautiful woman she has ever seen. There is an undercurrent here that Eileen feels a romantic attraction to Rebecca. Perhaps this is as much due to Rebecca’s kindness towards Eileen as it is to her beauty. Underlying homosexuality is certainly a theme that Moshfegh has experimented with before, as it becomes apparent near the end of McGlue as well. In general, Eileen has very odd sexual attractions. There is her off-putting obsession with Randy, her confusing fascination with Rebecca, as well as her interest in some of the young boys at the detention center. In fact, Eileen’s complicated sexuality is at the very center of this novel as it becomes a core aspect of her search for her own identity, which has been muddled by years of abuse and depravity.
Rebecca’s entrance to the plot is a welcomed one, as I was able to take the clothespin off my nose for a brief time. After about 100 pages of seemingly endless visceral disturbance, a shred of hope and warmth is introduced. Rebecca is the most cosmopolitan character in the novel and stands out like a firecracker in the bleak, monotonous world of snowy, blue-collar Massachusetts. The dynamic of her relationship with Eileen is strikingly reminiscent of McGlue’s companionship with Johnson, a wealthier, more personable man who, inexplicably, sought out the contemptible protagonist’s company.
It is similarly bizarre that Rebecca would have any interest in Eileen’s camaraderie, although her options are scarce in the small town. While Eileen woefully attempts to play it cool, the two women gradually become closer, culminating in a night spent at the town pub dancing and flirting with the local men. Naturally, Eileen later wakes up in a pool of her own sick.
Though Moshfegh employs her signature provocative language in Eileen, the imagery is not as captivating as in McGlue, where she depicts “blood wine … Whiskey made from ladies’ fingers … strong snuff from bad plants used to treat the blackhearts in lockup. Roasted meats. Pies filled with sugar plums, rats, brandy.” Also, the cast of Eileen seems to be missing the unique quirkiness of characters from previous stories. For example, this passage from “The Weirdos” shows Moshfegh at her best:
“My boyfriend hadn’t come home yet from his callback. He’d called to say that he was staying out late to watch the lunar eclipse and not to wait for him, and that he forgave me for touching his crystal skull and that he loved me so much and knew that when we were both dead we’d meet on a long river of light and there’d be slaves there to row us in a golden boat to outer space and feed us grapes and rub our feet.”
That’s where Eileen differs from Moshfegh’s body of work. In McGlue, there is almost no reason to support the protagonist – yet, I felt a strong emotional connection to his companion, Johnson, which endeared me to McGlue in the process. In “The Weirdos,” the main character is completely cruel and undeserving of sympathy. The boyfriend, as bizarre as he is, earns sympathy through his tragically misguided zeal for life. In Eileen, there are simply zero characters that deserve a heartfelt sentiment. Of course, I felt compelled to support Eileen, but only due to the horrendous situation she inherited. In terms of her behavior, she does almost nothing that could be construed as a positive step towards improving her grim circumstances. Rebecca, who seems to be a saving grace, does not garner much sympathy from the reader, either. Simply put, Eileen is a dismal portrait of a world devoid of warmth and reason that shook me in a way that will remain for some time.