Roman Clodia's Reviews > Acts of Desperation

She alone could see all the reservoirs of need that existed in me and would never stop spilling out, ruining all they touched, and she didn't hate me for them, but felt sorry for me

My, this is intense. Nolan has written a book about lives which are messed up and complex, and has done it with empathy, smartness and no judgement. Reading this makes me realise how one-dimensional if, nonetheless, important so many single-issue books are whether dealing with abusive relationships, self-harm, alcoholism, body image or addiction. Nolan's narrator suffers from them all, rolling them up into a single needy character who is, yet, seemingly functioning not unsuccessfully in her social world.

This is a beautifully nuanced book which avoids the obvious in lots of ways: abusive relationships might be about neither straightforward physical nor emotional abuse, and the lines between abused and abuser more wavery and involving more complicity than we might realise. Both Ciaran and the narrator are troubled in their own ways and their relationship is as much one of co-dependency as it is of asymmetrical power hierarchies.

Along the way, there are moments of acute analysis on, for example, the extent to which the cover of 'art' may enable and legitimate misogynistic cruelty; or how concepts of 'female desire' might still be contaminated by, and be responses to, centuries of patriarchal authorship on 'what women want'; or how victimhood may be mobilised in varying ways.

But this kind of acute intellectual underpinning never swamps the story which is compulsively gripping throughout. Not a book for anyone unprepared to be dealt disturbing and emotionally vexed material - but I found it bold, courageous and fluent.

Many thanks to Random House/Vintage for an ARC via NetGalley