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Acts of Desperation

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What to expect

A riveting, cathartic literary debut about love, addiction, and what it does to us.

Wouldn’t I do anything to reverse my loss, the absence of him?

In the first scene of this provocative gut-punch of a novel, our unnamed narrator meets a magnetic writer named Ciaran and falls, against her better judgment, completely in his power. After a brief, all-consuming romance he abruptly rejects her, sending her into a tailspin of jealous obsession and longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him and his love at all costs, even if it destroys her ...

Part breathless confession, part lucid critique, Acts of Desperation renders a consciousness split between rebellion and submission, between escaping degradation and eroticizing it, between loving and being lovable. With unsettling, electric precision, Nolan dissects one of life’s most elusive mysteries: Why do we want what we want, and how do we want it? 

Heralding the arrival of a stunning new literary talent, Acts of Desperation interrogates the nature of fantasy, desire, and power, challenging us to reckon honestly with our own insatiability.

“A blistering anti-romance.” —Catherine Lacey, author of Biography of X

"Hot as viscera." —The New Republic

Critics Review

“Megan Nolan is a huge literary talent, and her first novel, Acts of Desperation, is a love story like no other. The writing is intense and honest, with a rare access to real life, but it is also reflective and full of insights, and with this combination the novel manages to separate the idea of love and the experience of it, and take the reader to the place where it comes into being.”
 —KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD
“Megan Nolan is a huge literary talent, and her first novel, Acts of Desperation, is a love story like no other. The writing is intense and honest, with a rare access to real life, but it is also reflective and full of insights, and with this combination the novel manages to separate the idea of love and the experience of it, and take the reader to the place where it comes into being.”
 —KARL OVE KNAUSGAARD
“Megan Nolan writes with piercing vulnerability and precision. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation is a blistering anti-romance about the seductive destruction of trying to find self-worth in the gaze of another.”
 —CATHERINE LACEY, author of PEW and THE ANSWERS
“Megan Nolan writes with piercing vulnerability and precision. Her debut novel, Acts of Desperation is a blistering anti-romance about the seductive destruction of trying to find self-worth in the gaze of another.”—CATHERINE LACEY, author of PEW and THE ANSWERS
"I devoured this book, my heart trilling with equal parts terror and exhilaration. It is an emotional thriller, a portrait of obsession—its pleasures and powerlessness, its inevitable corruption not only of integrity, but even selfhood. Nolan's prose is cool and liquid, her content perfectly scorching. I loved this taut and torturous ode to the parts of us that persist, even as we are wrecked by love."
 —MELISSA FEBOS, author of ABANDON ME and WHIP SMART
“I devoured this book, my heart trilling with equal parts terror and exhilaration. It is an emotional thriller, a portrait of obsession—its pleasures and powerlessness, its inevitable corruption not only of integrity, but even selfhood. Nolan’s prose is cool and liquid, her content perfectly scorching. I loved this taut and torturous ode to the parts of us that persist, even as we are wrecked by love.”—MELISSA FEBOS, author of ABANDON ME and WHIP SMART
“Remarkable…This mesmerizes from the first page.”
 —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (Starred Review)
“Acts of Desperation charts the obsession of an unnamed narrator…with forensic focus and biting honesty.”
 —THE OBSERVER, 10 Best Debut Novelists of 2021
Author Megan Nolan
Narrator Lauren Coe
Duration 6 hours and 40 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781549185779
Format Audiobook
Publisher Hachette Audio
Genre Fiction: general and literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Interior life
Availability US

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