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

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When Nathan tells Eve that he knew just what she wanted without asking, she is struck not by the intimacy of the statement but 'the soft hush of certainty' in his words.

It was like looking into the lives of three extremely boring people whilst they tried to muster up a bit of excitement that didn't really make them any less boring. 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. Featuring a vibrant rainbow design, and our super-sized Q logo, you won't find a more stylish way to make a statement.Anyway, I did not read this over so I don't know if it made sense but this book made me feel awful so congrats to the author because I know that was part of the point and I am so glad to have finished reading it. even eve, despite being the protagonist, is defined only by her sexuality and has no other interests in goals.

But, in fact, Fishman’s elegant novel ventures an alternative sexual ethic, one unconstrained by conventions but nonetheless fiercely attentive to what we owe one another.

the central emotional tension is about how eve is going to bridge that gap with olivia, and then… she doesn’t. no, but it is undeniably hot girl shit to sit at a fancy restaurant being objectified by a man and feeling the self willingly - or, as willingly as is possible for this - dissolve. Acts of Service ] arrives with quiet confidence and a fully formed bank of ideas about intimacy, sexual ethics and contemporary mores that Fishman could go on exploring for years to come. If the gray areas around sex, power, and consent are difficult for you, then this book will be difficult for you because that is its entire deal. it is pleasurable to abdicate responsibility - to both whatever social ethics you feel yourself beholden and to the self in general - to walk through a gilded door.

the bisexual mind is made out to be both uniquely conflicted and singularly perceptive, as if it were not innately human to interrogate desire. Fishman has some potentially interesting things to say about the gap between mind and body, self-delusion or naivety, and the constraints of the political as a means to frame individual desire; but these tend to be buried by her insistence on documenting the minutiae of the interactions between Eve, Nathan and Olivia. Yet Eve finds herself increasingly drawn to him, and to the lifestyle he represents, and then to being submissive to his needs. Fishman’s Eve, heir to Eve Babitz, makes us complicit in her interrogation of desire with an erotic, cerebral, subversive and tormenting tale, a reckoning formed in the cracks between certainties, like the cooling magma that rises between tectonic plates; between voyeurism and complicity, intimacy and alienation, the body and the mind.I found myself constantly convincing myself it was one over the other, thinking I must not be seeing what was hiding in plain sight. Fishman’s trying to deal with a range of overlapping issues here, around identity, class, patriarchy and various forms of power alongside what is/isn’t permissible sexual expression – what is, what should be, what might be forbidden. and the book has a sharp grasp on those seductions, at first - that which is easy is seductive, in the sense of being both the lazy option and the luxurious one. An evocative exploration of desire and sexuality, this dark debut will cause readers to question the very nature of consent. Uno strumento per andare alla scoperta, verso la conoscenza di altri corpi umani, e quindi di altre anime.