Eileen

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh is the novel that announced the arrival of a major and discomforting new voice in American fiction — a portrait of a young woman in 1960s Massachusetts so vivid in its misanthropy, self-loathing, and darkly comic self-awareness that it is simultaneously repellent and impossible to put down. Eileen Dunlop, who works in a boys’ prison and lives with her alcoholic father, is consumed by fantasies and grievances — until the arrival of a glamorous new colleague sets in motion a chain of events that will change everything. Moshfegh’s prose is cool, precise, and wickedly funny, and her refusal to make her protagonist sympathetic in conventional ways is a deliberate and brilliant artistic choice. Published by Vintage, Eileen was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and remains one of the decade’s essential debut novels.