Acts of Desperation: A Novel

"I am personally looking forward to Irish writer Megan Nolan’s debut, Acts of Desperation, about a brief, toxic relationship, its aftermath, and examining the self-negating impulse of a woman who needs to see herself reflected in the eyes of another person to feel herself to be real. With endorsements from Karl Ove Knausgaard and Catherine Pew, I think it’s going to make a real splash. I admire Nolan’s sensitive and emotionally honest personal essays; if you haven’t come across her before, I recommend this piece – which offers unflinching self-analysis disguised as an ode to the affordable pub chain Wetherspoons (“I still go there alone some hungover maudlin Sundays, needing there to be somewhere which always stays the same, and costs the same, and sounds the same.”), and this essay she wrote about being a university dropout for The Guardian (“When I arrived at Trinity, for all my problems, I still believed myself to be essentially clever and interesting, and within four weeks, that idea of myself, which had kept me safe, had been shattered.”). I’m placing preorders now for Jon McGregor’s fifth novel Lean Fall Stand and Katherine Heiny’s Early Morning Riser , both out in April. Look out for Rosa Rankin Gee’s Dreamland , set in Margate, on England’s south coast, in the near future: sex, drugs, rising sea levels and a love story between two young women. Plus Redder Days by Sue Rainsford, a slim masterpiece of literary horror. Part of our best books of 2021 series."