Acts of Desperation is a novel about a women with self-destructive tendencies, in a very dysfunctional relationship with a boy she falls in love with. Set in Dublin, in the 2010s with some reflections back from the future, when the main character is in Athens some years later. It has sharp short chapters, it's a quick and intense read. She explores all the phases of this relationship, how it starts as almost too good to be true, and eventually tips to becoming toxic. Written in first person, the unnamed protagonist falls in love with the handsome Ciaran, who we perceive pretty soon as a very “bad” person, he is controlling and cold and immature and even gets violent, he clearly has some unresolved issues even if he manages to hide them pretty well. She moves in with him, tries to make him love her even though it becomes clear that he is still in love with his ex. All the while we understand that both of them are making mistakes, behaving disrespectfully and abusing confidence, until it gets to a point when the reader just wants her to stop it.
The female character is interesting, romantic love “is her religion”, however she is very conscientious and ironic about her compulsions, she drinks too much, and basically she gets off on being humiliated even as she knows that's wrong on a deep lever, lack of self worth.
“If I could disregard myself first, then what did it matter if he did too?”
They live in Dublin, and her social life is close to the literary milieu, the novel is basically ticking all the Sally Rooney boxes. Which I think is great, I don't feel the novel was repeating patterns, she got her own voice through.
The author Megan Nolan writes for a living, essays and columns. It shows that she has a lot of experience for her age – it just feels crazy that nowadays authors can be younger than me, and excels in expressing nuances. Why am I reading so many Irish authors at the moment? I don't know, I guess it has to do with the algorithm of online bookshop recommendations and the taste of my favourite Youtube book reviewers. I even learned that there is already a name for this genre (it's early to call it a genre, in my opinion), it's Millenial Women Fiction (contemporary novels like My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh and books by Sally Rooney, to name the most popular, featuring millennial life and relationships with often a very self conscious protagonist).
In Acts of Desperation Megan Nolan reflects on the power of men, in general, it made me actually wanna date girls, but well, not if the girls were like her protagonist. It's a a study about abuse in relationships, even sexual violence, but also about self hate and psychological abuse.
“The act of unwanted sex was not was angered me the most, but rather the tedious reminder that men can often do whatever they want and that some of them will.”
“Mediating your own victimhood is just part of being a woman. Using it or denying it, hating it or loving it, and all of these at once. Being a victim is boring for everyone involved. It is boring for me to present myself through experiences which are instrumentalised constantly as narrative devices in soap operas and tabloids.”
For a novel of my taste it is a bit too simple structured narrative wise, but I enjoyed it nevertheless and I do recommend it. The challenge for me as a reader with this novel was maybe a personal one, even though we read to experience situations and character traits that are not our own, for the pleasure of empathy and curiosity, it's usually easier if we share certain things with the characters. In this case the main character is literally everything I'm not. It's difficult to explain but I'm kind of glad I read it, I think it's part of an important public discourse to be had.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario