Eileen.

Set in 1964, but recounted from the present day, Eileen details a week in the life of 24 year old Eileen who lives a thoroughly dreary and depressing life in a small New England coastal town. She lives with her delusional alcoholic father, has a job at the local correction facility for young boys and fills her mind with dark fantasies. 

She is an oddball, a misfit, who has never had a friend until Rebecca, a glamorous teacher with an air of mystery, appears seemingly out of the blue to tutor boys at the detention center. Eileen is fascinated by Rebecca and readily accepts her offer of friendship However, things are not always as they seem...

Eileen is a book that I think you will either love or hate - I loved it. 

It is very dark, morbid even, but it is made clear from the beginning that Eileen has managed to change her life for what she feels is the better. Eileen isn't nice, she's complicated and disturbed but I couldn't help feeling concern about her awful life and hoping that she would escape it.

Although the book describes just a week in Eileen's life it does so in such a very detailed way you feel that you understand her whole life. The prose is concise and gripping, descriptions are beyond excellent - you can sense the poverty and squalor and feel the desperation of the lives of those involved. The characterizations in this are superb, every person in the story is flawed or damaged in some way but they are handled skillfully by the author.
Its not really a thriller but there is a final twist in this dark tale that sent shivers down my spine - it was so unexpected and so well executed that it shocked me completely.

Eileen is a truly original novel - macabre and spellbinding.

Recommended.