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Fraulein Else is a 1924 novella by Austro-Hungarian author Arthur Schnitzler, it's told entirely in the form of the stream of consciousness of a young woman on a spa holiday with her aunt, who receives a letter from home asking her to ask a family acquaintance named Von Dorsday for money to save her father from ruin.

The novella is essentially her thoughts about this, and what happens when she approaches Herr von Dorsday and he asks a most improper price for his help. If she doesn't meet his bargain, her father will be ruined and will go to jail, but if she does what does that make her?

It's a compelling and beautifully written work, I generally dislike stream of consciousness works but this really succeeds, Else is brought marvellously to life and her dilemma and her attempts to think through it and then to avoid thinking about it at all are expertly captured.

It's published by Pushkin Press, and written up in much more detail over at my blog, linked to in my sig. It's worth here reading the longer review, as it's a work of some subtlety and on a first impression sounds terrible - a stream of consciousness novel about a young woman faced with an awkward social situation. It's much, much better than that.