At first glance, it seems as though Acts of Service stages a contest between Eve’s sensuality and her scruples. Problem is, the sexual dynamic she creates amounts to nothing more than a systematic dismantling of both women’s feminist pretensions of independence and self knowledge and agency. And every time this happens I think, "Well here is a useless Goodreads review," and then everyone ends up really liking that particular review. it’s really an easy five star, filled with taboo topics and fascinating characters and revealing dynamics. Eve tentenna, ma solo un attimo, è troppo curiosa, il desiderio è forte, per Olivia, e molto probabilmente anche per l’ancora sconosciuto Nathan.

to all authors out there, stop the omission of speech marks in your work in favour for what you think is quirkiness. There are all these things I can point to that make the power dynamic suspect, so many things about the ways he did things that were not coercive and yet they weren't entirely not.

Have I ever had times when I’ve needed to rest and receive skillful assertions of love and strength? And, rather than all the philosophizing, I longed for the fleshy descriptions of Anaïs Nin, the fantasies of Nancy Friday or even the thrilling nihilistic misanthropy of Ottessa Moshfegh – to be taken inside the body, to enjoy the physical pleasure of desire. An] extraordinary debut novel, Acts of Service [is] a work of ferocious moral and sensual intelligence and a masterly defense of sex for its own sake. and this is a very long prelude to saying: that is how this book opens up, and the promise it makes to its readers. Majority of the text is thoughts that the main character has, rather than action, so if you don’t like that, this is not the book for you.

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. I couldn't understand why these two women would obsess so much over such a blatantly boring and insufferable man. Anyway, I did not read this over so I don't know if it made sense but this book made me feel awful so congrats to the author because I know that was part of the point and I am so glad to have finished reading it.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. This constant teetering between pleasure and angst over what Eve feels and what she thinks creates a momentum that relies on exceedingly eccentric complications rather than any expectation of resolution. The shots themselves were fairly standard: my faceless body floating in bedrooms and bathrooms, in mirrors.