Eileen: A Novel

Eileen: A Novel

ShortlistedÂ for the 2016 Man Booker Prize and chosen by David Sedaris asÂ his recommended book for his Fall 2016 tour.Â

So here we are. My name was Eileen Dunlop. Now you knowÂ me. I was twenty-four years old then, and had a job that paidÂ fifty-seven dollars a week as a kind of secretary at a privateÂ juvenile correctional facility for teenage boys. I think of it nowÂ as what it really was for all intents and purposesâ€”a prison forÂ boys. I will call it Moorehead. Delvin Moorehead was a terribleÂ landlord I had years later, and so to use his name for such a placeÂ feels appropriate.Â 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 EileenÂ Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed youngÂ woman trapped between her role as her alcoholicÂ fatherâ€™s caretaker in a home whose squalor isÂ the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as aÂ secretary at the boysâ€™ prison, filled with its ownÂ quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentmentÂ and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary daysÂ with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping toÂ the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nightsÂ and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buffÂ prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up herÂ increasingly deranged fatherâ€™s messes. When theÂ bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint JohnÂ arrives on the scene as the new counselor atÂ Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unableÂ to resist what appears at first to be a miraculouslyÂ budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, herÂ affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her intoÂ complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildestÂ imaginings.

Played out against the snowy landscape ofÂ coastal New England in the days leading up toÂ Christmas, young Eileenâ€™s story is told from theÂ gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much olderÂ narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimelyÂ funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson andÂ early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debutÂ novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces oneÂ of the most original new voices in contemporaryÂ literature.

From the Hardcover edition.
Country USA
Manufacturer Penguin Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2015-08-18
UnitCount 1
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2015-08-18
UnitCount	1
Format	Kindle eBook

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