Moshfegh leaps and bounds, then, over the hurdle which usually does for short story writers tackling their first novel-length project.
Set in 1964 New England, and focusing on the eponymous protagonist during the week leading up to the Christmas of that year, the novel has all the claustrophobic intimacy of the short story – the form’s tart phrase-making, its taste for vivid imagery – and yet is expertly paced and packaged as a novel.
That Eileen impresses despite all this is testament to the quality of its craft. Beloved of The Paris Review, recipient of several awards, and, despite her much-heralded absence from social media, something already of a “personality” in literary circles, Moshfegh’s appearance on the 2016 Booker shortlist is not the surprise triumph of a rank outsider that it first appears to be. Ottessa Moshfegh is one of those debut novelists whose first book in fact comes freighted with expectation.
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