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I did not care for Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel Eileen. Despite the publisher’s blurb about a “Hitchcockian twist,�� this is not a mystery or a crime novel or even a creepy psychological suspenseful read. Eileen is a long character portrait of a young woman named Eileen. She is repulsive, obsessive, socially awkward and unpleasant. Despite her darkness, she’s not remotely interesting and the so-called “Hitchcockian twist�� can be seen coming from a mile away. I gained nothing from reading this book and found it boring and repetitive.

Eileen is a twenty-four year old woman who lives at home with her alcoholic and mentally ill father. She barely eats, drinks a lot, is obsessed with and repulsed by vulgar (yet normal) bodily functions and thinks she is in love with (in the most shallow way possible) a prison guard at the juvenile detention facility where she works as a secretary. She spends a lot of time thinking about Randy the prison guard, her toilet habits, and possibly killing herself and how sad her father would be once she is gone. When not thinking of how to off herself, she thinks about her father dying, possibly by his head being split open by one of the ever-present and incessantly mentioned dangerous icicles that dangle over the front door. When Rebecca Saint John arrives at the detention center as a new employee, Eileen is captivated by her beauty and carefree personality and wants to do whatever she can to impress her.

And that’s the whole novel. The prose is dark and descriptive and sets the scene for me quite well. I see Eileen very clearly. Unfortunately, as the novel loops around and around, slowly revealing more about Eileen’s unhappy childhood and the odd relationship between her parents, there’s never any kind of big reveal, nothing that results from all the circling and repetitive details. Eileen is weird and incredibly repulsive and at first I had some sympathy for her; she was clearly raised without any kind of true kindness and has no idea of how to behave socially. As the novel continues to hit me over and over with her repulsive and disgusting habits, I care less about Eileen because she’s so disgusting. She clearly does know better, but enjoys being filthy and smelly and shitting in a can. And for all that, her unlikeable personality and repugnance isn’t even put to good use because I don’t see that she’s particularly intelligent or curious or even an interesting character. The creeping pace of the novel, and the constant discussion of the icicles, bored me and I lost interest about half way through. I didn’t care for Eileen. I lost sympathy for her. She’s not evil or detestable, she’s just repulsive and creepy. Someone you wouldn’t think much about except to avoid her physically when she was around. The crime twist at the end is so yawn. Who didn’t see this coming? Even the ultimate ending, how Eileen left, is so anticlimactic and blah. By then, I was merely excited to finish the damn novel and be done with it.

Eileen is not my cup of tea. I think this book is more of a personal taste kind of book. It’s well-written, but I felt it went nowhere very very slowly. Merely creating a repulsive and unlikeable character is not a great literary achievement. Readers have to also find this repulsive and unlikeable character interesting, fascinating and want to know what she’s going to do. Moshfegh does not have that character in Eileen. She’s all the repulsive and unpleasant you could want, but ultimately as boring as white bread. I see that David Sedaris has recommended this book. I love you, David, but this book is a complete fail for me.