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

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Seamlessly written, sedate and subtle and so pleasurable, and quite enrapturing on a psychological level.

Still, I think the valuable insight and highlightable moments were few and far between compared to the nonsensical introspective monologues we get from the main character which really just don't feel like anything is being said. A lot more shit happens in this that makes the book feel like a steaming pot of gossip that you probably shouldn’t be reading. Her gratitude to Nathan, she explains truthfully, is beyond what can be codified or legally anatomised.the plot itself is organized chaos: every character is unlikeable and morally gray and toxic in their own way, and every relationship is underlined with degrees of unequal power dynamics and passivity. I never found out what was this rare and invaluable experience that he was able to give them either. It’s told through a distant lens that removes the narrator (Eve) and the reader from how trivial and dull her life is. Uno strumento per andare alla scoperta, verso la conoscenza di altri corpi umani, e quindi di altre anime.

That’s the only way her exploration of two queer women’s simultaneous experience of love and sex with the same man makes a lick of sense. While I was brushing my teeth or stepping out of the shower I would see my own body and find myself overwhelmed with a sense of urgency and disuse. this book is everything i dislike about the "vaguely depressed women in their twenties" subgenre of literary fiction (normal people, my year of rest and relaxation, etc). genuinely cannot comprehend how a queer women seems to think women's attraction to other women is somehow less real than men's attraction to women. She shouldn’t enjoy Nathan’s domineering tendencies, which are, in the lexicon of the ethical system she is trying so hard to abide by, “problematic”.This is how Eve meets Olivia, and through Olivia, the charismatic Nathan-and soon the three begin a relationship that disturbs Eve as much as it delights her.