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Acts of Desperation
- Narrated by: Lauren Coe
- Length: 6 hrs and 41 mins
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Publisher's Summary
This "blistering anti-romance" (Catherine Lacey) paints a riveting, cathartic story about love addiction and what it does to us.
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?
Combining the intellectual excitement of Rachel Cusk with the emotional rawness of Elena Ferrante, Acts of Desperation interrogates the nature of desire, power, and toxic relationships, challenging us to reckon honestly with our own insatiability.
What the critics say
“Megan Nolan is a huge literary talent, and her first novel, Acts of Desperation, is a love story like no other. The writing is intense and honest, with a rare access to real life, but it is also reflective and full of insights, and with this combination the novel manages to separate the idea of love and the experience of it, and take the reader to the place where it comes into being.”—KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD
“Megan Nolan writes with piercing vulnerability and precision. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation is a blistering anti-romance about the seductive destruction of trying to find self-worth in the gaze of another.”—CATHERINE LACEY, author of PEW and THE ANSWERS
What listeners say about Acts of Desperation
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- miss_ipkiss_reads
- 2022-02-22
Fantastic
Nolan's exploration of female rage and desire is raw and painful. I wanted to pull the unnamed narrator into a bear hug and whisper "i know" and "please don't do this". What is so unsettling about this book is how crisply it captures the way our relationships and identities suffer under patriarchy. Our unnamed narrator dissolves into domesticity like it's the default setting she's reluctant to lay claim to. She is conflicted by her body, all the ways men see her, use her, and keep her, without having a firm grasp of who she is. She's lead astray by men who also carry the wounds of patriarchy, rebelling against societal ideals in an effort to feel something other than her insatiable desire for love. Dripping with indie sleaze heroine chic nostalgia for the 2010s, Acts of Desperation doesn't shy away from the uncomfortable truth of being lost and desperate in your 20s.
TW: rape, sexual assault, self-harm, body dysmorphia, eating disorder, body shaming, substance abuse, toxic relationship, gaslighting, domestic violence
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