Eileen

LoveReading Says

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2016.

Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger Award 2016.

A young woman relentlessly drives through the darkness of the American roads. Is she fleeing from a misdemeanour? Is she on a mission? Slowly, the pieces of her past come together for the reader to assemble a troubled story where apportioning the blame for some tragic events becomes a most murky business.

Allusive, elegant, highly poetic in its evocation of the sounds and spells of night and offering disturbing insights into the confused minds of lost women, this is a striking debut from a young US writer whose reputation has been carved in small literary magazines. The criminal element is muted and the single, unassuming parts knit together to form an unexpected whole and define a character that will stay in your mind for a long time afterwards.

Demonstrates crime writing is not always necessarily about bodies and killers and imperfect investigators. ~ Maxim Jakubowski

Chair of the Man Booker 2016 judges Amanda Foreman commented: "This is a very exciting year. The range of books is broad and the quality extremely high. Each novel provoked intense discussion and, at times, passionate debate, challenging our expectations of what a novel is and can be. It is a longlist to be relished.”

The shortlist was announced on 13th September, and the winner will ultimately be named on 25th October, at a black-tie dinner at London’s Guildhall, as broadcast by the BBC.

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.

Reviewed by Maxim Jakubowski
Maxim Jakubowski is a London-based novelist and editor.
More reviews by Maxim Jakubowski

About Eileen

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.

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