From Powells.com
Our favorite books of the year.
Staff Pick
As blistering a character study as I've ever come across, Eileen is flat-out brilliant.
Suffering from a severe case of narcissistic personality disorder, 24-year-old Eileen is so wrapped up in her own mind, other people barely exist for her. Her dead mother, her drunken father, her absent sister: they're mainly just a nuisance in her daily life. Her coworkers, her boss: they're mere shadows in her periphery. Even the man she lusts after is just a shell for her own amusement.
That is, until she meets Rebecca: everything stops, everything changes, nothing else will ever matter. Their friendship blossoms, and when Rebecca has a problem bigger than she can handle on her own, Eileen is right there to help.
Don't miss this scorching, intricate, horrifying portrait of the friend you hope to never meet. Excellent! Recommended By Dianah H., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
A lonely young woman working in a boys' prison outside Boston in the early 60s is pulled into a very strange crime, in a mordant, harrowing story of obsession and suspense, by one of the brightest new voices in fiction
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 purposesa 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.
Review
“A woman recalls her mysterious escape from home in this taut, controlled noir about broken families and their proximity to violence…. The narrative masterfully taunts…. The release, when it comes, registers a genuine shock. And Moshfegh has such a fine command of language and her character that you can miss just how inside out Eileen’s life becomes in the course of the novel, the way the 'loud, rabid inner circuitry of my mind' overtakes her. Is she inhumane or self-empowered? Deeply unreliable or justifiably jaded? Moshfegh keeps all options on the table…. A shadowy and superbly told story of how inner turmoil morphs into outer chaos.” Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review
“Literary psychological suspense at its best." Booklist (starred review)
Review
“Eileen is anything but generic. Eileen is as vivid and human as they come . . . Moshfegh, whose novella, 'McGlue,' was published last year, 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 . . . There is that wonderful tension between wanting to slow down and bathe in the language and imagery, and the impulse to race to see what happens, how it happens.” The New York Times Book Review
Review
“Like The Woman Upstairs and Notes on a Scandal, Eileen turns on the symbiotic relationship between love and hate, hope and delusion, and — for the reader — repulsion and absolute absorption.” New York Magazine
Review
“Wonderfully unsettling first novel . . . When the denouement comes, it’s as shocking as it is thrilling. Part of the pleasure of the book (besides the almost killing tension) is that Eileen is mordantly funny . . . this tale belongs to both the past and future Eileen, a truly original character who is gloriously unlikable, dirty, startling — and as ferociously human as the novel that bears her name.” San Francisco Chronicle
Review
“[A] dark and unnerving debut.” Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Shortlistedfor the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris ashis recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.
So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you knowme. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paidfifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a privatejuvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it nowas what it really was for all intents and purposes a prison forboys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terriblelandlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a placefeels 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 EileenDunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed youngwoman trapped between her role as her alcoholicfather s caretaker in a home whose squalor isthe talk of the neighborhood and a day job as asecretary at the boys prison, filled with its ownquotidian horrors. Consumed by resentmentand self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary dayswith perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping tothe big city. In the meantime, she fills her nightsand weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buffprison guard named Randy, and cleaning up herincreasingly deranged father s messes. When thebright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint Johnarrives on the scene as the new counselor atMoorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unableto resist what appears at first to be a miraculouslybudding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, heraffection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her intocomplicity in a crime that surpasses her wildestimaginings.
Played out against the snowy landscape ofcoastal New England in the days leading up toChristmas, young Eileen s story is told from thegimlet-eyed perspective of the now much oldernarrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimelyfunny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson andearly Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debutnovel enthralls and shocks, and introduces oneof the most original new voices in contemporaryliterature."
Synopsis
Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Anne Hathaway
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
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.
Synopsis
Now a major motion picture, starring Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
"Eileen is a remarkable piece of writing, always dark and surprising, sometimes ugly and occasionally hilarious. Its first-person narrator is one of the strangest, most messed-up, most pathetic--and yet, in her own inimitable way, endearing--misfits I've encountered in fiction. Trust me, you have never read anything remotely like Eileen." --Washington Post
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.
About the Author
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. She is currently a Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford.
Ottessa Moshfegh on PowellsBooks.Blog
My short story collection is called
Homesick for Another World. It's a book I worked on for four years. It begins with a story of an alcoholic Catholic school teacher who quits her job once her ex-husband pays her to stop harassing him with early morning phone calls, and ends with a tale of a girl in a foreign land deluded by superstition...
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