Eileen

ORSON WELLES'S LAST MOVIE: The Making of "The Other Side of the Wind," by Josh Karp. (St. Martin's Griffin, $16.99.) After years of self-imposed exile, Welles returned to the United States hoping to complete his grandest film yet: a tale of an aging movie director who kills himself on the anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's suicide. (Welles maintained it was not autobiographical.) The unfinished film remains largely unseen, and Karp delves into the various factors that blocked the project's completion, including the Iranian revolution and Liechtenstein-based companies. THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, by Paula Hawkins. (Riverhead, $16.) Rachel, the divorced, unemployed, alcoholic and unstable heroine of this novel, has developed a fixation on a couple whose house she passes every day during her train ride into town. But when the woman goes missing, Rachel involves herself in the investigation, and turns out to have surprising connections to the crime. GOD AND JETFIRE: Confessions of a Birth Mother, by Amy Seek. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $15.) After an unplanned pregnancy, Seek chose to give her baby up for adoption. As part of her arrangement, Seek and the adoptive parents maintained a relationship throughout the child's life. The author reflects in this memoir on the excruciating grief of parting with a child and surrendering her role as a mother. THE ILLUMINATIONS, by Andrew O'Hagan. (Picador, $17.) The stories of Anne, an aging and once-renowned photographer, and her grandson, Luke, who traveled on an Afghan humanitarian mission, make up this novel. After Luke returns home to the United Kingdom, struggling to recover from his time overseas, spending time with his grandmother and uncovering a cache of her memories gives him comfort. "The Illuminations" is "both a howl against the war in Afghanistan and the societies that have blindly abetted it," Dani Shapiro said here. THE MAKING OF ASIAN AMERICA: A History, by Erika Lee. (Simon & Schuster, $18.) An impressive survey of life in the United States for Asians who sought to make their homes here. Lee's account spans some of the most ignominious episodes in the country's past, including legislation that barred Asian immigrants from entry, and shows how Asian-Americans, now the fastest-growing group in the United States, have shaped America. EILEEN, by Ottessa Moshfegh. (Penguin, $16.) In 1960s New England, Eileen plots an escape from a world largely dictated by men around her. Moshfegh skillfully explores "a woman's relationship to her body: the disconnection, the cultural claims, the male prerogative," our reviewer, Lily King, said. A HIGHER FORM OF KILLING: Six Weeks in World War I That Forever Changed the Nature of Warfare, by Diana Preston. (Bloomsbury, $18.) Preston traces the rise of a new class of weapons to this period in 1915, when the Germans launched a merciless assault on the Allies, gassing the Canadians and French, sinking the Lusitania, and bombing London.

Eileen keeps a dead mouse in the glove compartment of her Dodge and refuses to clean, cook, or care for her abusive, alcoholic father, an ex-cop. Wishing him dead, yet still needing his approval, she keeps him supplied with gin while secretly planning her escape. At age 24, she works as a secretary for a boys prison, a job she hates until the arrival of Rebecca, a new employee, who offers Eileen friendship but at a price. Moshfegh's (McGlue) creepy thriller is full of strange, antisocial behavior that helps express the rage and low self-esteem of a damaged young woman with few options. We know escape is possible, however, since the story is told by a much older and contented Eileen, looking back to a Christmas week in 1964. Unfortunately, too much of the book is about Eileen's degradation, and the excitement, when it does come, seems contrived and unsatisfying. Alyssa Bresnahan narrates in a convincing voice that captures Eileen's painful self-absorption as well as her father's drunken paranoia. VERDICT This book will appeal to listeners who appreciate beautiful language and don't mind a work that also explores the revolting side of being human. ["Readers of all kinds will relish this well-crafted fiction": LJ 6/1/15 review of the Penguin hc.]-Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.