As the visit is beginning, Rebecca arrives to observe and take notes. Polk, Lee's mother, visits for the first time. On Tuesday, Eileen oversees visiting hours. Rebecca comes in to say goodnight and upon seeing the file, asks to borrow it. After the other secretaries leave, she looks at Lee's file and discovers he is in prison for killing his father. Stephens why Lee is in solitary and is told he is a troublemaker. Lee begins to touch himself, and Eileen watches, transfixed, before a sound startles her and she goes back to the office. Currently in the cave is Lee Polk, a boy who has been silent and withdrawn ever since arriving a few weeks previously. Eileen wanders past 'the cave' where boys are kept in solitary confinement due to bad behavior. Rebecca leaves early, and later so does Eileen. That afternoon, the boys put on the annual Christmas pagent. Eileen is thrilled to have finally found a friend. She shows Rebecca her locker in the staff room and they briefly banter. Eileen finds Rebecca beautiful, stylish, and glamorous. Morris, and director of education, Rebecca Saint John. On Monday, the warden introduces the new psychiatrist, Dr. That evening, Joanie visits briefly.Įileen spends her last weekend in X-ville similar to most others, buying alcohol for her father, visiting the library, shoplifting from stores, and sitting outside Randy's apartment hoping to see him.

On Friday, Eileen spends her time counting down the clock at her job fantasizing about Randy, a prison guard she has a crush on and being annoyed with her fellow secretaries, Mrs. She fantasizes about leaving and moving to New York City. Eileen is deeply unhappy with her life and her self.

Her mother died several years prior, and her sister Joanie lives a town over and visits sporadically. She lives with her father, a former police officer who is an alcoholic and suffers from paranoia where he believes he is being watched. In 1964, 24-year-old Eileen is a secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys, which she calls Moorehead. Plot Įileen narrates the events of her last week in her home town, a small Massachusetts town she calls X-ville, 50 years previously.

The novel was adapted into a 2023 film of the same name. It won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for debut fiction and was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award. Eileen is a 2015 novel by Ottessa Moshfegh, published by Penguin Press.

Eileen by ottessa moshfegh