Eileen ( (Shortlisted For Man Booker Prize For Fiction 2016)

Description: This book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016. It was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize 2016 and shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger Award 2016. It was also selected as a Book of the Year 2016 in The Times, Observer and Daily Telegraph. "Fully lives up to the hype. A taut psychological thriller, rippled with comedy as black as a raven's wing, Eileen is effortlessly stylish and compelling." (Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Times). The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop. Trapped between caring for her alcoholic father and her job as a secretary at the boys' prison, she tempers her dreary days with dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, her nights and weekends are filled with shoplifting and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counsellor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted, unable to resist what appears to be a miraculously budding friendship. But soon, Eileen's affection for Rebecca will pull her into a crime that far surpasses even her own wild imagination.

Review: "Fully lives up to the hype. A taut psychological thriller, rippled with comedy as black as a raven's wing, Eileen is effortlessly stylish and compelling." -- Robert Douglas-Fairhurst The Times "A sucker punch of a novel, full of fury and disgust, heart-wrenching in places, a masterclass in mood and tone. Eileen is a fantastic creation and a surprisingly satisfying antidote to the dozy and complacent heroines of much so-called literary fiction." -- Julie Myerson "An unforgettable new American voice." Los Angeles Times "The great power of this book...is that Eileen is never simply a literary gargoyle; she is painfully alive and human, and Ottessa Moshfegh writes her with a bravura wildness that allows flights of expressionistic fantasy to alternate with deadpan matter of factness... As a character study, the book is a remarkable tour de force... As an evocation of physical and psychological squalor, Eileen is original courageous and masterful. Moshfegh never panders." -- Sandra Newman Guardian "A seductive novel...Moshfegh writes beautiful sentences. One after the other they unwind - playful, shocking, wise, morbid, witty, searingly sharp. The beginning of this novel is so impressive, so controlled yet whimsical, fresh and thrilling, you feel she can do anything." New York Times



Prizes: Shortlisted for CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2016 and Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2016 and Gordon Burn Prize 2016.

Author Biography: Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from Boston. She was awarded the Plimpton Prize for her stories in The Paris Review and granted a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. One of the stories in this collection, 'Slumming', recently won an O. Henry Award. Her novel Eileen was awarded the 2016 Pen/Hemingway Award and is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.