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ON SALE FOR $1.99 THIS WEEK! May 17, 2018...if you can prepare yourself for some disgusting self-care and a bizarre protagonist, the story will wow my fellow oddballs. If you prefer commercial fiction, then stick to Lee Child and Jodi Picoult... Ottessa is not your writer.
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Apparently, Im a total softie for a sociopathic narrator. When the person whispering in my ear is pathologically self-absorbed, that lovely and hideous freak usually has me wrapped around his little finger. Or her finger, in this case.

Eileen is weird. She is not keen on bathing, lives off a handful of peanuts, and once a week takes massive doses of laxatives to purge. She lives at home with her pop who never much loved her but does appreciate the bottles of gin she runs out to get him.

But as she narrates the story 50 years later under an assumed name, we wonder what it was that finally gave her the guts to run off from her unnamed city - Xville, she calls it. We assume, of course, that some sort of crime has taken place, and even in her 70s, Eileen is guarding her actions.

"I looked like a girl you’d expect to see on a city bus, reading some clothbound book from the library about plants or geography, perhaps wearing a net over my light brown hair. You might take me for a nursing student or a typist, note the nervous hands, a foot tapping, bitten lip. I looked like nothing special.""

""I kept in the glove box of the Dodge a dead field mouse I’d found one day on the porch frozen in a tight ball. I’d picked it up by its tail and swirled it through the air for a moment, then slung it in the glove box with a broken flashlight, a map of New England freeways, a few green nickels."

""...honestly, even in those darkest moments, the idea of anyone examining my naked corpse was enough to keep me alive. I was that ashamed of my body. It also concerned me that my demise would have no great impact, that I could blow my head off and people would say, “That’s all right. Let’s get something to eat.�"

"I remember a man I met in my thirties who bent my ear one night babbling about his happy childhood—presents under the tree, cocoa, puppies, chestnuts roasting on an open fire. There’s nothing I detest more than men with happy childhoods.""

The first three quarters of this book were a delicious slow burn for me. The dark and bizarre life Eileen leads in her secretarial Job at a juvenile boys detention center takes a new turn, and finally - pop! A surprise.

Up until the last several pages of this book, I would have given it a five star rating. Look - I love horrible narrators like Dr. Marc and Joe Lon and that chick from the Girl on the Train book. They are far more interesting than any goody two shoes character ever written. Even when the narrator is a good guy, I end up judging a book by the complexity of the villain in the story. The motivation behind the bad is a lot more difficult to write, I think, than somebody who grew up as part of the Brady Bunch.

So prepare to be repulsed and mesmerized. In a million years, I had no idea where this book or should I say Eileen was going. While the conclusion left me a bit wanting, this quick read is well worth the time. I could not put this down! Four point seven five stars

UPDATE: Booker short list!