Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen ***

It's appropriate that Eileen is titled simply with its narrator's name, because it's a character study more than anything else. Eileen is a young woman struggling with loneliness and insecurity in a small New England town in 1964. Moshfegh captures her plight very effectively and realistically, if at a bit too much length. It's easy to believe that Eileen would respond to the attentions of the glamorous Rebecca even as they lead her into trouble.

Eileen might have been more impactful as a short story. Homesick for Another World proves that Moshfegh can build characters efficiently; I think she could have shown Eileen's neediness and her evolving feelings about Rebecca in at least half as many pages.

Michel Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island ** 1/2

I've intended to read a Houellebecq novel for quite some time but couldn't decide which one to choose. Evelyn solved the problem for me by giving me The Possibility of an Island for Christmas.

The Possibility of an Island alternates between narrators: a caustic comedian from (roughly) the present day and two of his clones from two millennium hence. The current Daniel is present at the inception of a new religion that promises eternal life through cloning; the future Daniels show how immortality has worked out.

I can sum up the main theme of the book in one sentence: The primary driver of human life is sex and related instinctual drives, while the aspects of our personalities that we want to retain are the more rational ones. That's an interesting idea but I wasn't impressed by Houellebecq's presentation of it. Too much sex and self-pity, not enough insight. (Just after typing this paragraph, I found a similar verdict at the review-summary site Complete Review: "interesting scenario and ideas, fairly ponderous and crude presentation.") Furthermore, the narrative doesn't start to get interesting until nearly halfway through.

Ian McGuire, The North Water ***

Behold the man.
He shuffles out of Clappison's courtyard onto Sykes Street and snuffs the complex air—turpentine, fishmeal, mustard, black lead, the usual grave, morning-piss stink of just-emptied night jars.

The North Water is an adventure tale that leans heavily on its grimy atmosphere. The author takes particular pleasure in describing scents and bodily functions, as shown by the very first sentences quoted above. The story involves a ragtag collection of miscreants headed into the North Sea on what is ostensibly a whaling expedition but may involve insurance fraud as well. One of the harpooners is a sociopath; the surgeon is a disgraced veteran of India; the captain sunk his previous ship by colliding with an iceberg.

The pull quotes on the cover come from Hilary Mantel, Martin Amis, and Colm Toibin, all suggesting a British book (correct) with literary pretensions (not really). The North Water is a well-told adventure, but it doesn't address literary themes beyond the typical action movie question of whether goodness can ever compete with evil.

Donald Hall, The Selected Poems of Donald Hall ****

A perfect companion to Essays After Eighty, this slim volume is Hall's personal choice of his own favorite poems. It starts out strong with "My Son My Executioner":

My son, my executioner.
   I take you in my arms.
Quiet and small and just astir
   And whom my body warms.

Sweet death, small son, our instrument
   Of immortality.
Your cries and hungers document
   Our bodily decay.

We twenty-five and twenty-two,
   Who seemed to live forever,
Observe enduring life in you
   And start to die together. 

The poems appear in roughly chronological order (I would have liked writing or publication dates), which enables you to see his development as a poet. He experiments with different styles, but his themes remain consistent: as he says, he writes about "love, death, and New Hampshire." More specifically, many poems contrast the endurance/recurrence of nature with the transience of human life. There are also a few about how our stuff outlasts us. Are these themes reflective of Hall's seven decades of writing or of his current preferences as an editor?

I don't like (or understand) every poem, but the hit percentage is high. The book is full of striking images and is the perfect digestible length for poetry.

Siri Hustvedt, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women ****

This essay collection shows how certain questionable unexamined assumptions shape our thoughts about art, science, and social issues. Most notably, the unresolved philosophical mind-body problem "has shaped and often distorted or confused contemporary thought in neuroscience, psychiatry, genetics, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary psychology." How do ideas (in the mind) exert influence on the physical brain (in the body), as they clearly do in cases such as false pregnancy, PTSD, and the placebo effect? No one has a clear idea of where the dividing line is between the mental and the physical, the psychiatric and the neurological, or even whether such a dividing line exists; however, researchers usually act as if the division is clear. Hustvedt argues for respecting the mystery as a key aspect of the human condition, and illustrates numerous ways that the mystery manifests itself.

I had never before noticed how the mind-body problem is the same as the nature-nurture question, nor how many of our gender prejudices flow from a presumed hierarchy between the two terms (mind = male, body = female). Hustvedt effectively asks core questions (How does the placebo effect work?) before discussing abstract philosophy, and keeps the discussion grounded in her own experience. She also applies the ideas in a variety of contexts ranging from art appreciation to evolution to suicide.

As you have to expect in a collection of essays, A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women repeats itself, making the same point in multiple contexts. The long piece in the middle, with the excellent title "The Delusions of Certainty," starts out strong but wears out its welcome about halfway through.

I found the book engaging and exhausting.