But when Rebecca is ushered in as the new prison psychologist, a blond vision poured into snug skirt suits, carrying herself with unflappable poise on her power heels, something sparks in Eileen. While Eileen’s mind flashes with thoughts of blowing her brains out or those of her father, on the surface she’s a mousy figure in shapeless cardigans and dowdy skirts, numb to the curt treatment of her older co-workers at the prison, particularly a head secretary played with hilarious sourness by Siobhan Fallon Hogan. A mean drunk, he tells her there are two kinds of people in the world - the dynamic characters you can’t keep your eyes off in movies and the other nobodies that just fill the spaces around them, lumping Eileen with the latter. But to the outside world, Eileen appears to be the only person not in touch with her anger as she stares longingly at couples making out in cars parked by the wintry seashore or has sex fantasies about a lanky prison guard (Owen Teague) before going home each night to the verbal abuse of her widowed ex-cop father (Shea Whigham). It’s Massachusetts,” Eileen Dunlop tells her glamorous new colleague at the boys’ prison where she works in the office, Hathaway’s Rebecca St. Screenwriters: Luke Goebel, Ottessa Moshfegh, based on Moshfegh’s novel (Aug.Venue: Sundance Film Festival (Premieres)Ĭast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham, Marin Ireland, Owen Teague, Sam Nivola, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Tonye Patano With the arrival of the mysterious Rebecca, an alleged education specialist at Moorehead, Eileen’s momentum (and the narrative’s) finally picks up somewhat, although it will still feel stagnant to some readers. As the claustrophobia and filth of her circumstances become more suffocating over the course of the novel, they seem more redundant than effective.

Unfortunately, some 100 pages in, she is still announcing her imminent departure. The book’s opening evokes a stark kind of empathy for Eileen, who is extreme in her oddness and aversion to personal hygiene, but still quite likable. Eileen’s perspective is one of hindsight, some 50 years later, looking back on her final days of quiet, isolated misery before the rest of her life begins, a very different life we know will happen without knowing much more. She also spends a lot of time hating herself (“I looked like nothing special”) and plotting her exodus from the small New England town where she’s been trapped. In 1964, Eileen Dunlop is 24 years old, living with her cruel, alcoholic father, and working at Moorehead, a juvenile detention center for boys. Winner of both the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and a Stegner Fellowship, Moshfegh moves beyond her previous short fiction achievements with this dark and unnerving debut novel.

Eileen ottessa moshfegh review