ŷ������

Because Eileen is completely alone, in every imaginable way, she can comfortably know everything absolutely. If i were younger i’d be tempted to consider a sideline religion based on her Absolutes; well, some of them. Maybe. When you’re unchallenged, you are, de facto, correct in all things and i thoroughly enjoyed this point of view from our auto-antifa heroine-ista, a perverse, artfully self-deprecating Tanner stage 2 twenty-six year old - all revved up and ready for ruination.

Creating her days - “out of whole cloth�� (which qualifies as the miracle part of the religion thing), such as the surely inevitable romance with one of the guards in the boys prison where Eileen works:

“I spent many hours watching his biceps flick and pump as he turned each page of his comic book. When I imagine him now, I think of the way he’d swerve a toothpick around in his mouth. It was beautiful. It was poetry. I asked him once, nervous and ridiculous, whether he felt cold wearing just short sleeves in winter. He shrugged. Still waters ran deep, I thought, nearly swooning. It was pointless to fantasize, but I couldn’t help imagine one day he’d throw stones at my attic window, motorcycle steaming out in front of the house, the melting the whole town to hell. I was not immune to that sort of thing.��

And her ability to pull the all-star out of the grotesque:
She kept a frozen (dead) mouse in the glove box of her car, finding that it bolstered her with a hearty “glad i’m not you!�� sentiment. Creative, yes? Prior to the appearance of the frozen vermin, she had used photos of new inmates - responding with the same feeling. Now that's just making the best of things!

I also found myself agreeing with many of her insights on the silly disguises we use:

p. 138 “Getting dolled up was completely silly, of course. You can always tell something when a woman is overdressed - either she’s an outsider, or she’s insane.��

p. 29 “People smelled better back then. I am certain this is true��.Nowadays I often have to leave a room or walk away when a person near to me smells bad. I don’t mean the smell of dirt and sweat, but a kind of artificial, caustic smell usually from people who disguise themselves in creams and perfumes. They are predators. They are like the dogs who roll around in one another’s feces. It’s very disturbing.��

Some might find the twists, surprises, momentous moments in this book ridiculous or completely unrealistic. Nah, not really...i don’t. Anyone who has the privilege of spending a few decades in an emergency or drop in clinic, can trace the increasingly perverse and sad, the deeper depths of loneliness and desperation, as folks, freshly unemployed, perhaps just evicted, see no future, no safety net, no outstretched hand - only nastiness and xenophobia as the oligarchs divide and conquer. Crack, meth, alcohol, heroin - all or any of it - if it can make it all go away for awhile...

The boys locked up in Eileen’s prison - each part of their own Greek tragedy. Each landing there because they saw no way out of impossibly awful situations. Abused horribly, nightly by your father, after being prepared by your mother (by enema). At what point is it reasonable self-defense to kill the father? Day one? Or after 12 years? None of them initiated the evil that landed them in this place - guaranteed to send them downhill forever. No - they all were just Big Losers in the Womb Lottery.

Eileen's send off -which i can’t say anything about without saying too much - was Perfect.

I loved this book. It was heartbreaking and brilliant and hilarious, and, yes, i did pour myself a vodka tonic or two while reading it - Wanna make something of it? Wanna meet me outside? After church, of course.