It’s obvious Fishman set out, on some level, to examine and expose weighty issues around sex and sexuality – or at least weighty from her perspective. She belongs to a set “to whom queerness meant a specific type of ethical awareness”, and lesbianism arises in her life “like a faith”.

But Eve strives to conform to a set of unwritten rules, her politics dictating what desires she will or won’t explore, in her mind “queerness” goes hand in hand with a particular set of ethical choices. but eve’s central sin (ha ha ha) is passivity more than anything else, and i feel like a book interested in discussing (1) the sexual oasis of false power an allegedly emancipated hot girl can find inside the male gaze (2) the concerns of power and control between women, and how gay women can develop a sort of overcompensatory conscience to keep them from becoming ‘like men’ in their pursuit of other women - might go a little harder on what it means for the heroine to see herself in this wall street shithead guy. I don't think this book that centres around women being "liberated" by a man making choices for them and having their entire life in his hands can in any way shape or form be feminist? But Fishman isn’t really interested in looking at the world in this way: her story seems to be aiming at allegory, but ends up in an uncomfortable halfway house between that and realism, in the end achieving neither .All’inizio del romanzo Eve posta online, in forma anonima, degli autoscatti di nudo integrale, e tra i vari commenti che riceve seleziona quello di Olivia. so this book can't even claim to be an analysis of her as a person, because it's only bothered with her thoughts on sexuality and on men. the bisexual mind is made out to be both uniquely conflicted and singularly perceptive, as if it were not innately human to interrogate desire. Eve isn't a very likeable character and prone to rambling navel-gazing at great,and tedious, length while Nathan is a bit of a Poundland psychologist and Olivia flits around in the shadows like an afterthought.

Just when you think you have these people figured out, she changes the angle and you see something new. On an evening when she is feeling particularly impulsive, she posts some nude photos of herself online. I can’t believe this well written story of Acts of Service, by Lillian Fisherman’s is her first novel.possibly the last act feels weak and cowardly because the author was genuinely fearful of (2), to a degree that ends up neutralizing both eve and nathan as characters and as literary projects (to say nothing of leaving poor olivia at the narrative door). Disturbing, erotic, completely compulsive; quickeningly captivating, provocative in ways that I am still turning over. Uno strumento per andare alla scoperta, verso la conoscenza di altri corpi umani, e quindi di altre anime. At first glance, it seems as though Acts of Service stages a contest between Eve’s sensuality and her scruples. Unfortunately, despite the nod to Babitz, her mischievousness and humor are mostly absent in this book.

While I (sadly) didn't find this as radical and daring as the cover blurb promises, I did find it consistently interesting, opening up conversations that don't, perhaps, get explored as deeply as they could be. it did not work for me, but i can appreciate the conversations it will begin about sex, gender and queerness for some of its audience. Fishman’s prose is polished but it can also be stagey and the concepts she’s exploring seem more than a little confused and confusing. it’s about love and sex, gender and power, and how to find yourself or even know what that would look like. If you love watching the new Gossip Girl TV Show, with sexuality weaved into the show, then you will love this book Acts of Service.Eve, 27, a bisexual waitress living in New York City who had previously chosen to sleep exclusively with women, posts some nudes on an online message board without her girlfriend's knowledge. There is often this desire to be above it, to no longer need them--in fact this is where Eve is at the beginning of the book--and it can definitely feel in the queer community that you are more accepted when you don't sleep with cis men. 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. Excitement Eve wants, that she gets as she tries to understand the dynamics between Nathan and Oliva and how her being with them may change that. So while I found the storyline and occasional musings to be interesting, this book was overwhelmingly a boring experience that left me very frustrated with the author.

to all authors out there, stop the omission of speech marks in your work in favour for what you think is quirkiness. By day, they work together at a family wealth fund, but by night, they are artists: Olivia paints, and Nathan’s art, as we know, is sex. It also demands generosity, and Fishman is clear that what is so sanctifying about Eve’s sex with Nathan is that he has no obligations to her – that she receives pleasure from him as a sheer superfluity, as a gift.

honor her by having a threesome for the story, falling in love with a GIRL for REAL, and asking her if she wants to run away to MEXICO. It is hard to do, except now I can just tell someone to read this book, change a few of the personal details, and it is him. Her writing is so brilliant and acute that multiple times, at random points in the book, I found myself wondering if she was in my head. But Eve’s restless, in theory her girlfriend Romi’s perfect, even though the reality of their relationship doesn’t mesh with Eve’s sexual fantasies.