Question 1

What is Acts of Desperation about?

Accepted Answer

Acts of Desperation follows an unnamed narrator in Dublin who becomes obsessively attached to Ciaran, a Danish man who is cold, withholding, and unfaithful. The novel traces the narrator's loss of self in this relationship — her willingness to subordinate her needs, her intelligence, and her dignity to the project of keeping him — and her eventual attempt to recover. It is a novel about the specific psychology of a certain kind of female self-destruction in romantic relationships, and about whether recognizing that psychology is sufficient to escape it.

Question 2

Is Acts of Desperation similar to Normal People by Sally Rooney?

Accepted Answer

Acts of Desperation is often compared to Normal People — both are Irish literary novels about young educated women in complicated romantic relationships in Dublin, written in stripped, precise prose. The comparison is useful but limited: Normal People is ultimately a hopeful novel about two people who need each other; Acts of Desperation is much darker, concerned specifically with the psychology of abjection and the way a woman can knowingly destroy herself for someone who doesn't deserve it. Readers who found Normal People too romantically redemptive often prefer Acts of Desperation.

Question 3

What should I read after Acts of Desperation?

Accepted Answer

Readers who loved Acts of Desperation typically move to Normal People and Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney and Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan for other contemporary Irish literary fiction about young women's intimate lives. For the specific tradition of the confessional novel about female erotic abjection that Nolan works in, In the Cut by Susanna Moore, The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek, and A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes are the companions most often cited.

Acts of Desperation Reading Order

Complete Acts of Desperation Book List