Ottessa Moshfegh’s Eileen is a book that I deliberately postponed finishing during several weeks, because I so liked the character waiting for me when I came home: her litany of complaints, dry humor and self-deprecation, and the weird suspense that fills every day of her life. The protagonist is both a dark soul in a dark world and a natural product of that time: adapted to a mediocre version of an evil environment, she explodes at a very slow pace. At face value, nothing is spectacular in Eileen’s life: her hidden desires, her public inelegance, the obscurity of her intimate life. But it all grows at a steady pace to show, inadvertently in the end, an ominous side of the American soul.
More from A Year in Reading 2016
Don’t miss: A Year in Reading 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
