I think she’s half pursuing these conventions of romantic love, and half rejecting them. Which produces this kind of contrariness. There’s this line in the first chapter where she says, “I only want what I hate.” These contradictions of desire and behavior run all the way through the story.
The Believer blog talks to Zoe Pilger about her debut novel, Eat My Heart Out, and the character she created that’s difficult to categorize.