For some reason I was under the impression this was yet another one of those ladies’ thrillers. But no, awesomely not. This is very much a literary novel and a very good one at that.
Clever through and through from the dual-meaning title to the terrific moebius strip of a plot, this is indeed a novel of obsession. First love is complicated. For the novel’s protagonist, Naomi, it comes relatively late, at 24, and challenges her to the extreme. Sure, her beloved seems like a great find, best Tinder can offer, really, with UK accent, a good job, and good manners, and yet she can’t seem to just enjoy things as they come. Maybe it’s her aspiring novelist’s brain, maybe it’s her privilege-based (free rent in NYC, well-to-do family, easy mindless bookstore job to whole the time away) mentality, but Naomi becomes obsessed with her new love’s old love. This obsession drives her (and the novel) and the fictional novel in her mind to push all sorts of boundaries, privacy based and otherwise, until she insinuates herself quite permanently in both worlds. And then the two worlds begin bleeding through and there’s so much than mere trust to be tested. This is the ultimate in Life Imitates Art, Art Imitates Life storytelling. Meta, too. Twisted onto itself. Everyone is obsessed with creative their own narrative, but Naomi takes it to new levels. And, like most things of extreme nature, it’s fun to watch in that impending crash sort of way. The protagonists’ age, angst, and ambiance put them firmly into the millennial camp, but the book overrides that innately unlikeable generational distinction into something closer to universality. Obsession, after all, is universal. To want, to crave, to spiral, to look for patterns in the fabric of life, to look for logic where none is too be found and then create your own. Be it in the name of love or in the name of art, be it by design or pathology, it’s a force to be reckon with. Read this book and find out how Naomi does. Like a good obsession, it’ll draw you right in. It’s clever, charming, very well-written and well worth a read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
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December 2023
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