Amazon Book Description:
"Wouldn’t I do anything to reverse my loss, the absence of him?"
In the first scene of this provocative gut-punch of a novel, our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, all-consuming romance he abruptly rejects her, sending her into a tailspin of jealous obsession and longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him and his love at all costs, even if it destroys her… Part breathless confession, part lucid critique, Acts of Desperation renders a consciousness split between rebellion and submission, between escaping degradation and eroticizing it, between loving and being lovable. With unsettling, electric precision, Nolan dissects one of life’s most elusive mysteries: Why do we want what we want, and how do we want it? Heralding the arrival of a stunning new literary talent, Acts of Desperation interrogates the nature of fantasy, desire, and power, challenging us to reckon honestly with our own insatiability.
Review:
I don't usually read modern romance novels like this, but if there's a book that's going to get my attention, it's going to be a book about obsessive love. Because I love reading shit about myself when it happens across my path. And this was a book of The Moment, since I read it back in... February? March? of 2024. Just felt like I had to read a book about a pathetic relationship and another woman going through it.
Well, I was surprised to relate to the man. With his ex. My life has been in a similar struggle this past decade, except I didn't even date him! Hm! So I think I'm objectively worse than the antagonist in this book. Lol.
The woman is actually pretty different from me. The way she treats her love is as an inevitability that she can't fight, like a curse inflicted on her. The equivalent of a your house getting hit by a hurricane, just something to accept as is. Whenever I had become grossly in love with someone, it was because my brain saw it as a solution to a problem that I had to action, or die without. It always felt like a thing I created with the good intention to solve another problem, (loneliness, boredom) but it went awry. Not an illness that I magically woke up with one day from some external source.
Because I thought I made this problem for myself, I felt a bit more control, responsibility, and guilt for my actions than this woman. Which is probably why I didn't go as far as to commit some of the terrible things she did.
I'm not sure if that made sense. I should sleep better...
She's very much someone who lets things happen to her. That's why she was submissive throughout most of the book. But I don't think I've ever been like that, yet, I've chosen submission as a tactic to get people to like me better. So you can be a person who feels like they have power and control, or a person who feels like they can't control anything, and still end up as a doormat in the end. I relate to her on how painful it is turning into nothing for someone else. It's been a long while since those days, but I've been there.
Also men sure do love the silent treatment don't they? Can't believe that was also in this book lmfao.
On a cerebral/enjoyment level this didn't do much for me. It was a light read. I didn't awaken my third eye with it. It passed the time. I'm actually surprised I wrote this much because I feel like I've been struggling with stuff to say about it. Pretty mid, 5/10.
Some Banger Quotes:
“I did not just love Ciaran but loved him darkly, wrongly. Losing someone you love in those ways can turn you not only mad but wicked too.”
“It had been like this when I was a teenager. My depressions were without source or resolution, and so I had no real answer to the question ‘What’s wrong?’ My relationship with Ciaran had the same feeling of inevitability. It just was. I just was in love with him, and any of the problems that came with it were simply to be borne. There was no point in describing them.”
“Part of what was between us was a conspiratorial acknowledgement that we were gross, that we were perverts, that it was nastiness bonding us together.”
“I hate now for men to dote in this way, the ones who don’t know me. Their praise lands uncertainly in the air somewhere between the two of us, because it doesn’t belong to me. I hate to hear them tell me what I am, even or especially when what they think I am is kind or brilliant or beautiful. I hate when they insist that I have no faults, that my laziness or violence or cruelty simply don’t exist.” (So true I hate getting flattered in this way, it does not feel genuine because it does not feel earned.)
“I let myself think of all this for a few moments and feel the relief it would bring. To let an entirely new thing take me over, which was the only way I would escape Ciaran alive, that woozy joy of being able to leave a whole life, my whole self, behind me in an instant.”
“Life was so pointless, so opaque and shifting, that I could only think about immediate feelings. Immediacy was all I had.”