Eileen: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016 - Hardcover

"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)

"In the literary world...Ottessa Moshfegh is seen as a comer, perhaps even the Next Big Thing. Eileen is a remarkable piece of writing, always dark and surprising, sometimes ugly and occasionally hilarious... Trust me, you have never read anything remotely like Eileen." (Washington Post)

"Ottessa Moshfegh has created one of the great characters of recent fiction. Eileen is a modern masterpiece: cruel, grotesquely beautiful and merciless as a hungry wolf finding a lost fawn in the snow." (John Burnside)

"If Jim Thompson had married Patricia Highsmith – imagine that household – they might have conspired together to dream up something like Eileen. It’s blacker than black and cold as an icicle. It’s also brilliantly realised and horribly funny." (John Banville)

"Excellent...a taut, well-written, and completely engrossing novel...culminating in a dynamite ending." (Boston Globe)

"Perverse, squalid and sinister this expertly paced novel ... delivers a thumping finish to match the build-up: a single line near the end has the effect of a thunderbolt, leaving us dumbstruck by her sly, almost wicked storytelling genius." (Anthony Cummins Daily Telegraph)

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2016 MAN BOOKER PRIZE

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, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s carer in his squalid home and her 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 handsome prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the beautiful, charismatic Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at the prison, Eileen is enchanted and unable to resist what appears 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, blending true noir and the eerie, unforgettable books of Shirley Jackson and Flannery O’Connor, this mesmeric, terrifying, sublimely funny debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature.