Eileen : A Novel
By Ottessa MoshfeghShortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris as his recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you know me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paid fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a private juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it now as what it really was for all intents and purposes-a prison for boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terrible landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a place feels appropriate. In a week, I would run away from home and never go back.
This is the story of how I disappeared.
The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father's caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys' prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father's messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.
Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen's story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.Ottessa Moshfegh is also the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Homesick for Another World: Stories, and McGlue.
show more
Book details
- Paperback
- 272 pages
- English
- 0143128752
- 9780143128755
About Ottessa Moshfegh
ottessa moshfegh was Read More about Ottessa Moshfegh
More Books By Ottessa Moshfegh
People who bought this also bought
The South Beach Diet Quick and Easy Cookbook: 200 Delicious Recipes Ready in 30 Minutes or Less
Used Book
The Zone : Revolutionary Life Plan to Put Your Body in Total Balance for Permanent Weight Loss
Used Book
Spreading the Fire : New Look at Acts - God's Training Manual for Every Christian
Used Book
Sh*Tty Mom : The Parenting Guide for the Rest of Us
Used Book
Get Over It!: Thought Therapy for Healing the Hard Stuff by Iyanla Vanzant
New Book
Beyond the Rule Book: Moral Issues and Dilemmas in the Practice of Psychotherapy
Used Book
What Do We Do Now? : The Complete Guide for All New Parents and Parents-To-Be!
Used Book
Tuesdays with Morrie : An Old Man, A Young Man and Life's Greatest Lesson
New Book
The Lazy Man's Way to Riches: Dyna/Psyc can give you everything in the world you really want!
Used Book
Keys to Excellence in Integrated Language Arts Level C
Used Book
Bringing Home the Gold : Ten Keys to Winning the Investment Decathlon
Used Book
How to Become Happily Employed: A Simple Guide to the Nitty Gritty of finding the Job That is Right for You
Used Book
Small MIracles II: Heartwarming Gifts of Extraordinary Coincidences
Used Book
Pace Picante Sauce: 40th Anniversary Recipe Collection; a Treasury of Tex-mex Cooking
Used Book