Recently, fiction has seen an increase in novels exploring women, their relationships and any sadness that can attach itself to both. Writers like Sally Rooney are spearheading this genre, but it’s not new: Last year, W. W. Norton reprinted postmodernist Jean Rhys’ bitingly miserable novels. Megan Nolan has the same bluntness of both writers, but the sorrow within her debut, ACTS OF DESPERATION, is reminiscent of a despairing Rhys protagonist.

The book follows the narration of an unnamed Irish woman in her early- to mid-20s as she navigates a toxic relationship with Ciaran, a man whose beauty she emphasizes as much as she does his coldness. He incited her desperate acts that give the book its title, and her self-awareness is profound and evocative. Nolan’s topics of discussion include sexual assault and harassment, eating disorders, addiction, grief and obsession. ACTS OF DESPERATION is heavy and designed to make readers feel uncomfortable, but its language is still stunning.

“Now…through my bewildered grief, I wondered if I was any better than him… Perhaps I had just never loved someone madly until now. Perhaps I had always been as violent as a man.”

"Readers can see the sad, even ugly, parts of themselves within its narrator and gain new sympathies, knowing that we all can act in such similarly desperate ways."

This section perfectly sums up much of the book’s themes: What is it to love, and how much can we not see while we are in it? Does love involve violence --- emotional or physical? Nolan opens a case study through her unnamed narrator with these kinds of questions to observe how and why one may be driven to cheat and act destructively, yet stay in a torturous relationship. The story begins with the narrator obsessively not understanding Ciaran’s relationship with a cheating ex, Freja, only to develop sympathy for the woman she had hated. It’s a remarkable reflection of the human thought process when it concerns encountering others’ perspectives.

However, despite Nolan writing beautiful introspective lines, there seems to be little cohesion across the narrative. This is perhaps because the novel reads like a series of diary entries focused solely on the writer’s emotions and thought processes. The narrator preferred to “tell” more than “show,” and this makes it difficult for the reader to fully comprehend her situation. She felt unreliable, despite her demonstrating some newfound insight as she looked upon her past. It’s evident that the narrator must have grown between the time of her relationship with Ciaran and the time at which she is recounting it, but couldn’t the narrator have also taken the time to enlighten her audience more?

The plot reads as if some parts were left unfinished. At one point, Nolan writes, “There were more good times with Ciaran than bad,” and yet there was nothing to show for that. The narrator might have felt that was the case, even if it were not so, but surely the new and improved narrator telling us the story would have told us she had been wrong to believe that. If there truly were more good times with Ciaran, I wish she would have told us those as well, but she didn’t. She often spoke about her friends who didn’t like Ciaran, but we never heard what they actually said, which is another shame.

Nolan and her novel’s narrator must have been aware of this, though, as seen through the chapters with Reuben, an ex of the narrator. He tells her that she only cares to speak of herself and not ask him or others about their lives. Perhaps the choice to “tell, not show” was made to demonstrate consistency within the narrator’s character. It might be frustrating, but it’s well done. Don’t we all know people who only consider their own narratives? This notion can inspire some reflection of our own actions, and that might be the best part of ACTS OF DESPERATION. Readers can see the sad, even ugly, parts of themselves within its narrator and gain new sympathies, knowing that we all can act in such similarly desperate ways.