Acts of Service: "A sex masterpiece" (Guardian)

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The writing was so beautiful, the characters were all so addictive, yet so horrible, and I just couldn’t put it down.

Eve isn't a very likeable character and prone to rambling navel-gazing at great,and tedious, length while Nathan is a bit of a Poundland psychologist and Olivia flits around in the shadows like an afterthought. Even though we might be into certain things, there are real world implications for it, and this book just kinda got me thinking, which is something I wasn’t really expecting it to do. Eve, the narrator of Lillian Fishman's Acts of Service, keeps an Eve Babitz quote taped to her wall that she and her roommate reference constantly: 'Any time I want, I can forsake this dinner party and jump into real life'. There were some ideas that I thought could've been interesting to think about, but I don't understand how all of them were distilled to this idea that Nathan was somehow the most important part of them all?

Unfortunately, despite the nod to Babitz, her mischievousness and humor are mostly absent in this book. at times, Eve seems a parody of the reflexivity-trapped narrator, churning out version after version of the cyclical chant 'I want him, but I shouldn’t, but I want him, but I shouldn’t .

It's pretty outrageous that every female debut nowadays gets compared to Sally Rooney, especially in this case: Beautiful World, Where Are You has some interesting sex scenes involving questions of consent, while in Acts of Service, Nathan and Eve question whether what Rooney portrays is the best way to negotiate consent, and there will be people who dismiss Fishman's book for these conversations alone. The million copy bestseller, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and. I was guilty of some trespass against my girlfriend, Romi—­that was clear from the fact that I was refreshing the page while hiding in her bathroom. A provocative debut of sex and sexuality as a twentysomething New Yorker pursues a sexual freedom that follows no other lines than her own desire. The ending had the chance at being interesting and I feel like the whole point of the novel was to attempt to subvert everything about "hating men" and flipping it back so that men are taken out of the spotlight of blame but actually able to /explain/ what misogyny means to women who are tired of being aware of how unfair the world is women.

Maybe you will think that Eve and the people she becomes entangled with, Nathan and Olivia, don't act like real people.

I had a lovely girlfriend—­selfless, adoring, great in bed, with the strong arms and shoulders produced by years of rugby. I was too fearful of the world to go out and get f***ed, too plagued by hang-­ups, memories of shitty girlfriends, fears of violence. there’s a line where eve** refers to herself as a political lesbian which chafed and continues to chafe. I just wanted something more, and I kept waiting for it to end in a way that brought meaning to the experience, but it felt more like it fizzled out.

This is how Eve meets Olivia, and through Olivia, the charismatic Nathan—and soon the three begin a relationship that disturbs Eve as much as it delights her. The story is about lesbian sexuality, with a mix of where Eve was becoming aware of her body and what she decides to do.

of course it's done pretty well for itself - it has the it factor that good litfic has, that simply can’t be faked or polished no matter how prestigious the mfa (though make no mistake the mfa is prestigious and the polish is significant - irl lol at seeing jonathan safran foer namechecked in the acks).I think a lot of this went over my head and the direct mockery of being queer felt deeply confusing. From the beginning, Eve reminds herself that she shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t: shouldn’t betray Romi, shouldn’t submit to her illicit desires, shouldn’t harbour illicit desires at all. i can honestly say I hate the small genre of these kinds of books that seem to be emerging; claiming to focus on 'starting conversations about sexuality' but not ever really saying anything of note, and revolving entirely on hypocritical women who we are expected to perceive as intelligent despite the fact that they choose to worship a truly disgusting man and consistently make decisions that I can only describe as unfathomable.