Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
Probably taking home the award for the most dog-eared book I own, Megan Nolan’s 2021 debut, Acts of Desperation, tells the heartbreaking, moving, and deeply uncomfortable story of our unnamed narrator who is navigating an all-consuming and devastatingly toxic relationship. This is a book about love addiction and how its encompassing nature can be our downfall. Nolan writes with brutal honesty as we follow our narrator from the moment she meets Ciaran, the aloof, older man who is the subject of her obsession, right through the evolution of their relationship.
From the moment we begin this suffocating journey, the honest and sometimes violent nature of this narrative is clear. The narrator is addicted to love and the idea of being loved. She will stop at nothing to ensure that Ciaran falls and, more importantly, stays in love with her. Her instant worship of him, despite his mediocrity, develops into a stifling life in which our narrator exists only for him. The narrator describes the desire to impress, love and retain Ciaran as a “violent need,” so even at moments where you think (and hope) that she might be growing tired of him and his abusive nature, she cannot leave this intense and desperate need to love and be loved by him behind.
“Some part of me had already decided to live for him and let him take over the great weight of myself. I was also so frightened of him and what he did to me that I could never admit this decision, inwardly or to him.”
Nolan’s decision to keep the narrator unnamed was incredibly smart, as we learn every other intimate detail about her as a person, but never this. It helps to emphasise the narrator’s lack of self-worth and this personal ideal that she cannot ever be worthy of love, acceptance or even contentment – because as the reader we can never truly know her full self. And I believe this isn’t something the narrator would truly want; she is nothing if not full of shame and suffering greatly with multiple mental health struggles. She mentions once how she wants to achieve “the impossibility of being known.” Yet she can’t see a way to truly open herself up and be vulnerable, because every time she has risked vulnerability it has burned her.
While the narrator is deeply flawed and makes many questionable decisions throughout the book, I couldn’t help but feel for her. My heart ached at her desperation to experience real love and her determination to keep a love that was harmful. I was rooting for her to find a sense of peace, to take the time to enjoy herself rather than serving a man who did nothing to reciprocate compassion or commitment. She stands by her consistent need to make this man love her, despite it being obvious to the reader that he isn’t capable of doing so.
The narrator’s idolisation of Ciaran is one thing, but his relentless emotional abuse and manipulation, including excessive controlling behaviour and using silence as a punishment, is what drove my disgust throughout reading. It leaves our narrator isolated from the rest of the world. Friends and family both take a backseat to what she considers the true purpose of her life; to secure this love and be worthy of it. The narrator can recognise this as well but is incapable of changing it and she watches her actions burn bridges with family that she doesn’t know how to repair.
“I was sitting in a car with someone who loved me more than life itself, and yet all I could think about was Ciaran. How impoverished my internal life had become, the scrabbling for a token of love from somebody who didn’t want to offer it.”
There is some keen commentary on the role of domestic labour in a household and the ‘women’s place’ in a heterosexual couple who live together. Our narrator spends extensive periods of time performing domestic acts and running their household to a level beyond her capabilities. There are multiple sections in the book in which our narrator reflects on this and we can see her eagerness, her keenness, as just another way to create a life in which Ciaran could live in. One where he couldn’t ever, couldn’t possibly, dream about another woman.
“I wanted him to live in a world where each need he might have had been pre-emptively filled.”
For anyone who has ever lived with this ideal that romantic love is the main goal and measure of success in life, there will be some part of this book that may strike a nerve. It was uncomfortable at times, and strikingly observant in the way I have often seen women needing to go above and beyond in relationships, while the man can take a backseat. Our narrator shows up, again and again, even when she shouldn’t, because she feels the pull and promise of love.
“I was the woman. I had suffered. I was there.”
In between exploring everything Melbourne has to offer and cooking new recipes at home, Heather loves to write about all the media she consumes. She reads a lot, but for some reason she can never seem to shorten her TBR list. Heather is currently working on a variety of fiction and hoping that a debut novel is in amongst them.