Miss Allingham has a strong, well controlled sense of humour, a power of suggesting character with a few touches and an excellent English style. She has a sense of the fantastic, and is never dull

The real queen of crime

An unforgettable new American voice.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Excellent…a taut, well-written, and completely engrossing novel…culminating in a dynamite ending.

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.

Moshfegh is a writer of significant control and range.

Mesmerising…A masterly psychological drama that lingers, with a disquieting effect, in the reader’s mind.

Wonderfully unsettling first novel... When the denouement comes, it’s as shocking as it is thrilling. Part of the pleasure of the book (besides the almost killing tension) is that Eileen is mordantly funny ... this tale belongs to both the past and future Eileen, a truly original character who is gloriously unlikable, dirty, startling – and as ferociously human as the novel that bears her name.

Captivating… That she’s a writer of rare talent and assurance is evident from the start of Eileen: the sentences unspool effortlessly, almost casually, though the material is dark and psychologically complex. The writing is shot through with lovely observation and detail… It’s a testament to Moshfegh’s skill that she can capture such extremes of light and shadow and, moreover, make us care about a woman who is, in so many ways, intensely dislikeable.

There's something far more grubby and gritty here than one expects... Not afraid to peer into the darkest and dirtiest corners of her characters’ lives, Moshfegh has proved herself an audacious talent, and without doubt one to watch.

A shadowy and superbly told story.

A very impressive debut novel.

Superb storytelling.

The story is utterly compelling.

Nail-biting climax.

A story that is constantly surprising, occasionally hilarious, but undoubtedly dark… Embrace its unsettling hedonism.

Thrilling to read.

Moshfegh’s writings stands out in several spectacular ways... In detail and texture the world she creates is unsettlingly vivid: a considerable achievement for a writer born so long after the era she depicts…. Eileen's anger and frustration dominate her story, helping to create a seamless mood of menace... Moshfegh's debut novel is set to attain classic status within the thriller genre.

An impressive character study full of subtle nuances, shrouded in mystery.

Eileen is an accomplished, disturbing and creepily funny first novel… Moshfegh’s control of tone and pace is masterly, her ventriloquism impeccable, and the period detail unobtrusively spot-on. I was occasionally reminded of Nabokov and Lena Dunham, among others, but her voice is her own, and immensely promising.

Moshfegh’s fine, clear, short sentences carry complex thought and emotional revelation effortlessly.

Moshfegh’s boldness is admirable.

Moshfegh is a rising star… Eileen, her expertly paced debut novel concerns a dowdy prison clerk who lives with her gin-soaked father… Moshfegh delivers a thumping finish, leaving the reader dumbstruck by her sly, wicked storytelling genius.

A conspicuous nomination as a new voice. The cult following Moshfegh has amassed in only four short years, with steady championing by the Paris Review.

It reminded me of Lolita... Dark and fierce.

Moshfegh is, without a doubt, a very, very good writer… There’s lots of these wonderful moments. Moshfegh’s writing is at its most compelling and chilling when she delicately and intricately weaves the most finely spun…of spiders webs around her readers head… Eileen is a pretty brilliant debut novel.

Moshfegh’s exploration of deep and lasting emotional damage is quite brilliant.

A dazzling, original novel with nourish flourishes voiced by a wickedly sardonic narrator’

The Man Booker shortlist has just been announced… Our favourite is Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh.

The character of Eileen is fascinating and Moshfegh’s creation is the reason this has made the longlist. Naive, unpredictable and able to elicit responses from sympathy to revulsion from the reader but throughout you will her to get her life back on track and escape both the prison she works in and the one she has created for herself. I would be very happy to see this on the shortlist.

This is eerie, Hitchcockian and refreshingly original.

Sex, death, revenge and abuse run like dark currents beneath every page and come together in a brilliantly sustained denouement in which all the novel’s motifs…cohere and resonate.

A striking and ingenious work… She elevates Eileen from mediocrity to magnificence, in a feat that is nothing short of miraculous… The mark of reading a true master of suspense… Demands to be reread… At once chilling, ambitious and unexpected, Eileen is undoubtedly deserving of its Booker Prize nomination, and, dare I say it, of a win.

[It is] gripping… The writing is brilliant.

A very dark, morbid tale… I loved it, because it’s a really original voice that draws you into a dark psychology.

A clever, eloquent and captivating debut novel.

[It is] thrillingly playful.

The most grimly compelling fiction came from a new voice: Ottessa Moshfegh’s Man Booker-shortlisted Eileen. It takes nerve to create such a thoroughly dislikeable narrator… It is like someone reaching into a bottomless bag of gifts.

I loved its refreshingly dark and complicated protagonist and grubbily vivid sense of time and place. Eileen reads like a smart, feminist take on Hitchcock or Highsmith and was, for that reason, impossible to put down.

[Eileenis] compulsively deviant and utterly delicious… I savoured every single word of it.