In that regard, “Eileen” doesn’t fall far from the tree. After the initial cringe, we find something perversely irresistible in Moshfegh’s disturbed worlds. “I liked how ugly it all was, how trashy,” she says.
Moshfegh’s reader is something like the girlfriend who hates her awkward twitchy boyfriend but loves her neighborhood. The matter-of-fact tone in which the story is narrated only makes the ridiculous world inhabited by the duo seem more absurd. When he tried, he made a face like someone being penetrated from behind.” Moshfegh’s razor-sharp sentences convey this with pith. “His hamstrings were so tight he could barely bend at the waist. He walked around with buttocks clenched, arms rigid, neck and face turning red.” The girlfriend is judgmental. It was to tense your body vigorously during everyday activities. “He had a theory about how to stay in shape. Both are completely self-absorbed and awful. In “ The Weirdos ,” aptly named, a lethargic heroine and an overly-superstitious-paranoiac actor move in together. She is the goddess of the weird, the disgusting and the deformed. Ottessa Moshfegh is the queen of short stories. Author Ottessa Moshfegh at the 2015 Texas Book Festival.
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