“People truly engaged in life have messy houses.”
If you found yourself rocked by the unsettling brilliance of Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh, you’re not alone. With its bleak atmosphere, unreliable narrator, and twisted psychological depth, Eileen has become a go-to for fans of dark literary fiction. But, once you’ve devoured the final page, where do you go next? This list of books like Eileen is packed full of disturbing female protagonists, gritty character-driven tales, and novels that push the boundaries of morality and sanity. Whether you’re drawn to unhinged women in fiction, bleak psychological novels, or characters soaked in tension, these picks all promise to scratch that same itch. From authors who share Moshfegh’s fascination with flawed minds to stories drenched in dread and discomfort, these reads promise to stay with you – just like Eileen did.
Eileen Summary
The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an assuming yet disturbed young woman caught between her life caring for her alcoholic father and her day job as a secretary at the local boys’ prison. Fuelled by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen passes her dreary days with perverse fantasies and spends her nights shoplifting and stalking a buff prison guard named Randy.
When the bright and bubbly Rebecca Saint John arrives as the new prison counsellor at Moorhead, Eileen is immediately entranced. But her affection for Rebecca soon hauls her into complicity in a shocking crime that surpasses anything her wildest imagination could conjure up. Creepy, mesmerising with its snowy New England setting, and disarmingly funny, Eileen introduces Moshfegh’s distinctive voice through one of the most disturbed and unforgettable heroines in modern fiction.
Lapvona – Ottessa Moshfegh
Where better to kick off a list of the best books like Eileen than another one of Ottessa Moshfegh’s best novels, Lapvona? Little Marek never knew his mother. One of the few consolations he has in his life is his connection to the blind village midwife, Ina, who possesses an ability to communicate with the natural world. For some of the locals, Ina’s home in the woods outside of the village is a place to steer well clear of.
Among their number is Father Barnabas, the town priest and lackey for the depraved lord and governor, Villiam, whose hilltop manor contains an embarrassing amount of riches. The people’s need to believe that there are powers that be who have their best interests at heart is soon put to the test by Villiam and Barnabas. When fate brings Marek into the orbit of the lord, new and occult forces upend the old order. Come the end of the year, the veil between the natural and spirit world will prove to be very fine indeed.
Check Out The Best Books Like Lapvona
Boy Parts – Eliza Clark
Irina obsessively takes explicit photos of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, plucked straight off the streets of Newcastle. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world, and presenting her with an escape route from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema.
The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, orbiting around Irina’s obsessive best friend, and a timid young man from a local supermarket who has caught her attention. Similar to Eileen, Boy Parts is one of the most recognisable books featuring unstable heroines, delving into the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the modern age.
Check Out Our Boy Parts Book Review
The New Me – Halle Butler
Thirty-year-old Millie just can’t pull it together. Misanthropic and morose, she spends her days killing time at a thankless job until she can return home to her empty apartment, where she oscillates wildly between self-recrimination and mild delusion, fixating on all the little ways she might change her life. Then she falls asleep, waiting for the whole cycle to repeat itself.
When the possibility of a new job arises, it seems to bring the better life she’s envisioning – one that involves nicer clothes, fresh produce, perhaps even financial independence. Yet with it also comes the paralysing realisation, lurking just beneath the surface, of just how hollow that vision has become. Darkly hilarious and devastating like Eileen, The New Me is a dizzying descent into the mind of a young woman trapped in the funhouse of American consumer culture.
Tampa – Alissa Nutting
Celeste Price is twenty-six years old, beautiful, smart, married to a handsome man with money, and starting a new job as a junior high school teacher in suburban Tampa. But she holds a dark secret. She is driven by a singular sexual obsession – fourteen-year-old boys.
As the school year gets underway, Celeste has chosen and seduced the naive Jack Patrick, a quiet, thoughtful boy in awe of his teacher. But when her lustful frenzy begins to spiral out of control, the insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination, making for a dark, savagely funny read all about consumer culture and the pursuits of youth and beauty, perfect if you loved Eileen.
Luster – Raven Leilani
Edie is simply trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that ever meant anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t appear to know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up.
And then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort of agreed to an open marriage and an adopted Black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. As if navigating the constantly evolving landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young Black woman wasn’t tricky enough, Edie finds herself falling headfirst into Eric’s home and family.
Nobody Is Ever Missing – Catherine Lacey
Without telling her family, Elyria takes a one-way flight to New Zealand, leaving her unfulfilling life in Manhattan behind. As her husband scrambles to work out what’s happened to her, Elyria hurtles into the unknown. Her risky and often surreal encounters with the people and wildlife of New Zealand propel Elyria further into her deteriorating mind.
The risks Elyria takes on her journey are paralleled by the risks Catherine Lacey takes on the page. In urgent, spiralling prose, she whittles away the rage within Elyria and exposes the very real, very knowable anxiety of the human condition.
The Girls – Emma Cline
Northern California, during the violent end of the 1960s. At the start of summer, a lonely and thoughtful teenager, Evie Boyd, sees a group of girls in the park, and is immediately caught by their freedom, their careless dress, their dangerous aura of abandon. Soon, Evie is in thrall to Suzanne, a mesmerising older girl, and is drawn into the circle of a soon-to-be infamous cult and the man who is its charismatic leader.
Hidden in the hills, their sprawling ranch is eerie and run down, but to Evie, it is exotic, thrilling, charged – a place where she feels desperate to be accepted. As she spends more time away from her mother and the rhythms of her daily life, and as her obsession with Suzanne intensifies, Evie does not realise she is coming closer and closer to unthinkable violence, to that moment in every girl’s life where everything can go wrong.
Little Eyes – Samanta Schweblin
In Samanta Schweblin’s wildly imaginative novel similar to Eileen, “kentukis” have gone viral across the globe. They’re little mechanical stuffed animals that have cameras for eyes, wheels for feet, and are connected to an anonymous global server. Owners of kentukis have the eyes of a stranger in their home and a cute squeaking pet following them; or you can be the kentucky and voyeuristically spend time in someone else’s life, controlling the creature with a few keystrokes.
These creatures can reveal the beauty of the connection between far-flung souls – but they also expose the ugly humanity of our increasingly linked world. Trusting strangers can lead to unexpected love and marvellous adventure, but what happens when the kentukis pave the way for unimaginable terror?
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
