Acts Of Desperation

Woudn'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 & longing. If he ever comes back to her, she resolves to hang onto him & 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 & submission, between escaping degradation & eroticizing it, between loving & being lovable. 

With unsettling, electric precision, Nolan dissects one of life’s most elusive mysteries: Why do we want what we want, & how do we want it?

Heralding the arrival of a stunning new literary talent, Acts of Desperation interrogates the nature of fantasy, desire, & power, challenging us to reckon honestly with our own insatiability.
"Hot as viscera." —The New Republic

Megan Nolan was born in Waterford, Ireland & lives in London. Her essays, fiction & reviews published in the New York Times, the White Review, the New Statesman, the Sunday Times, the Village Voice, the Guardian, & in the literary anthology Winter Papers. Acts of Desperation is her first novel.