Ottessa Moshfegh: I didn’t set out to write Eileen as a noir novel | Fiction

Ottessa Moshfegh is a novelist from Boston ​whose thriller, Eileen, has had rave reviews in the US and been optioned by ​film producer ​Scott Rudin (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Social Network). Hollywood insiders describe it as the next Gone Girl.

What was writing this book like?
I conceived of it as an experiment. Could I write a mainstream book a normal person could read? I thought: I’d like to do this because I am totally broke. It was a practical experiment but I also had placed a weird limitation on the project. I had to ask: what is the essence of a novel? OK, it changes every day but at that moment it was a good story in which the reader could attach herself to the psychology of the narrator and in which something insanely interesting would happen. I wrote the first draft in less than two months. Then I didn’t touch it for maybe six months. Then I rewrote it three times. I’m interested in taking establishment genre and turning it on its head. I didn’t really set out to write a noir novel and I don’t know if I exactly have.

What was the seed of the story?
It wasn’t Eileen, it was the boy: Lee Polk. He was based on the true story of a young man who had murdered his father and was serving life without parole. His father had abused him and his mother had been complicit in the abuse. When I sat down to write this novel, I thought: this is going to be the terror that keeps me grounded and the drama developed around that.

How and where did Eileen draw her first breath?
Eileen was born, as I was, in New England. Her character and her obsessions are familiar to me although my family is nothing like hers. She suffers from existential dissonance, the idea you should be happy because you are an American [laughs]. This trouble is not peculiar to women but there is a certain flavour to it when you are a free-thinking person and not satisfied with a patriarchal status quo.

Eileen is unhealthily obsessed with her appearance – a side-effect of unhappiness?
People tell me: “Eileen is so crazy!” I find her exceptionally sane. Her obsession with her body, the way she looks, her sexual interests – that all seems normal when the life prescribed for her is so boring.

Are you a reader of noir fiction? A Hitchcock devotee? Which writers have inspired you?
I love Hitchcock… I’ve not read a noir novel in my entire life… Charles Bukowski, early Joyce Carol Oates…

What is the power of the antiheroine, the frump in action – I’m thinking of the Girl on a Train with whom Eileen has a superficial affinity?
Defective people are more interesting. Nobody wants to be bossed around by somebody claiming to be perfect. When you read a book, you are letting somebody else’s voice boss you around. Everybody is defective but if someone reveals their vulnerability, I trust them more.

Did you always know you were a writer?
I knew I was a writer aged 12. I’ve been dedicated to getting better and figuring out what kind of work I want to do. I started as an experimental prose writer. I attended a graduate creative writing programme at Brown [University on Rhode Island] which was awesome – and experimental. It is only in the past four or five years I’ve been using plot.

You have an exotic name. Where does your family come from?

My father is from Iran, my mother from Croatia. They met in music school in Belgium. Dad is a violinist, Mum a viola player. They were going to live in Iran but that didn’t work out. I was born in Boston in 1981 and grew up in Newton. It’s supposed to be the safest town in America and probably has, per capita, the highest population of psychiatrists. It is pretty affluent although my family wasn’t affluent. I think growing up in Newton is responsible for my obsession with the oppressed, defective psyche because that was my experience. The question was: why do I feel like such a weirdo – I always felt weird at school.

What was the most important thing you learned there?
To trust no one with my mind. At school, I learned: fuck school. It is only in the past two years that I’ve learned to feel empowered enough to trust myself and my own thinking more than the thinking of 100,000 people from the past. The other thing I learned from school is that it is just school, not life.

In the book you write: “People truly engaged in life have messy houses.” Is this true of you? And how do you create chaos on the page?
I’m middle-range tidy/messy. I like a tidy home. But with writing – what may look like chaos is the result of insane control freakery. I’m extremely organised and a work addict. I am currently not living anywhere. I am staying in Montreal for the next month and a half and then moving to Los Angeles.

Film rights to Eileen have been bought by Scott Rudin. Can you imagine the book as a film?
I always could. I felt that maybe I should have been writing a screenplay but then you wouldn’t have got the internal monologue. Hopefully, the film will happen: I’m curious to see what it will look and feel like.

And might you do the screenplay yourself?
No way!

Your character Rebecca is a femme fatale – have you ever met one in life?
I have been one, I certainly think so – but I’ve also been Eileen. Eileen felt real. Rebecca was somebody else’s character, a character from a movie or a book read long ago. She is an imaginary person in another sense too in that Eileen has imagined her.

Is it important to ignore the hype about your book to go on writing?
I don’t read reviews. I’m not on Twitter or Facebook. I try to avoid the internet. Nothing stops me writing. I have a sense of when to write and when not to based on what is happening in my own mind. I’m in the middle of a new novel and have just deleted 300 pages and know I am supposed to wait now. This next book makes Eileen look like a children’s tale.

Have you ever studied psychology?
Only my own and other people’s – but never formally, although I’ve been in therapy.

What do you like doing when not writing?
I wish I knew. I have amazing friends and I love them. I like travelling and art. But my writing life is my life.

Eileen is published by Jonathan Cape (£14.99). Click here to order a copy for £11.99