Eileen

2016 | Fiction & Poetry

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.

Ottessa Moshfegh (Author)