Name: E's review of Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman
Item: Acts of Service
Rating: 3
Author: E

Lillian Fishman

A provocative debut of sex and sexuality—“depicting the liquid frequencies of need and power with a thoughtful, savage eye” (Raven Leilani)—as a twentysomething New Yorker pursues a sexual freedom that follows no other lines than her own desire. If sex is a truth-teller, Eve—a young, queer woman in Brooklyn—is looking for answers. On an evening when she is feeling particularly impulsive, she posts some nude photos of herself online. 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. As each act of the affair unfolds, Eve is left to ask: to whom is she responsible? And to what extent do our desires determine who we are? In the way that only great fiction can, Acts of Service takes between its teeth the contradictions written all over our ideas of sex and sexuality. As incisive as it is exhilarating, this novel asks us to face our ideas about desire and power: what sex means to us, the forces that shape it, and how we find—or lose—ourselves in intimacy. At once juicy and intellectually challenging, sacred and profane, it might be the most thought-provoking book you read all year.

A Novel

Acts of Service

A provocative debut of sex and sexuality--"depicting the liquid frequencies of need and power with a thoughtful, savage eye" (Raven Leilani)--as a twentysomething New Yorker pursues a sexual freedom that follows no other lines than her own desire. If sex is a truth-teller, Eve--a young, queer woman in Brooklyn--is looking for answers. On an evening when she is feeling particularly impulsive, she posts some nude photos of herself online. 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. As each act of the affair unfolds, Eve is left to ask: to whom is she responsible? And to what extent do our desires determine who we are? In the way that only great fiction can, Acts of Service takes between its teeth the contradictions written all over our ideas of sex and sexuality. As incisive as it is exhilarating, this novel asks us to face our ideas about desire and power: what sex means to us, the forces that shape it, and how we find--or lose--ourselves in intimacy. At once juicy and intellectually challenging, sacred and profane, it might be the most thought-provoking book you read all year.

Olivia Dunn

It seemed to me now that freedom was the strength and the space to follow what moved me. What I had to reconcile myself to was being subject to my emotion, which I would always be striving to comprehend.

Genesis (@whisperingchapters)

i'm rating this book three stars since the last few chapters were a letdown and i don't like it when books only shine at certain parts and the rest are just okay

A beautifully written novel about how it feels to be a bisexual girl in this modern world, love, attraction and the juxtaposition in what we fear and what makes us feel safe. 

Rebecca

i have an inkling after reading the first few chapters that the entirety of this book might not be for me and i simply had the impression that, whether or not I liked the book, i would put it down and start on another without giving it any more thought. 

however, i was captivated by the immense writing and its clarity because of how it portrays fulfillment and meaning in life without fully acknowledging that it is one genuinely wants. in their own ways, the characters are morally gray and toxic that would definitely stimulate the reader’s own thoughts to explore their yearning urge into the world of pleasure and bliss, which is undoubtedly thought-provoking.

esperanza 

At times offensive and almost entirely lacking in point.

Daniel Bower

Naomi

read it cover to cover in one day. i don’t know how to feel about how enthralled i was by this book. i think the ways it disturbed me tugged me closer to it. & oh, it disturbed me. i don’t know if i cared about the characters as much as i was fascinated by them. erotic, tense, awkward, both uncomfortably and intoxicatingly honest, filled with white bourgeoisie bullshit, devious, complex and generous. this book chewed on the edges of my world & i am reveling in the complicated sensory experience.

mira lee

potentially a candidate for one of my fav books of the year yet also somehow the most stressful White Queer Woman In Her 20s Living A Listless Life In Some Major City novel i’ve read so far oh my god

stressful bc it was difficult—all the questions it asks and the answers it purports to provide through the lens of a total power exchange dom/sub dynamic, all the angles it presents and tries to justify even as it indulges a more objective understanding of them, all the dead ends it had to purposely seek to give me a proper and complete tour of the cartography it’s dealing with—and the end result was me gripping the railings on a rope bridge even as i skipped through three other novels that technically should have put me under more emotional duress. can’t even honestly say i kept going with this one out of anything so pure as interest or investment or anything close to entertainment; i was agonizing the whole time, if anything, over this need to shake the characters a little and tell them to 

 get up and be serious. i think at some point i even started feeling personally challenged by the hypothetical that if i met someone like nathan i real life, i’d remain unfazed—which i want to believe i would, but it also wouldn’t be fair if i didn’t admit that some of the red flags the main trio wore weren’t also on me in some form, in no small amount. 

there’s a thought here as well about how this is a book about sex and sexuality and carnal dynamics and The Body As A Visual Object, more along the vibes of eve babitz and john berger than sally rooney, but it’s exactly the specificity that the focus retained the whole time that highlights to me how maybe white, financially comfortable individuals just… don’t encode distrust in social dynamics the way others outside their experience do? distrust isn’t the best word bc that might be doing eve a disservice, but it felt like an experience particular to her kind of character for a line like this to apply: 

We love what disturbs us if it chooses us and tells us we matter. Don’t we love a cashed check, a passport, the touch of a president’s hand, though each pleasure rests on a cruelty just beyond our sight? The finger points, without equivocating, at us, and we wonder at being chosen.

 a story that can spotlight the special-ness of an individual at the expense of its costs and present it as this grotesque but nonetheless sanctifying thing seems to me distinct to a story that doesn’t involve someone who’s Been collateral damage, or knows someone who has, or comes from a community that has continually been the very cost people are happy to pay. it’s a point of discussion in itself that this book tries its best to cover all the bases, to acknowledge what it knows and what it doesn’t and what it can and never will know, and even still its narrator is complicit in the things the story allows to remain implicit. it’s not like i begrudge the narrative that, either, just that it reinforces what a luxury it is for this book to remain primarily about sex and sexual dynamics. although it tries to tackle everything it ropes into its background (queerness, defining and doing right by feminism, power dynamics, class) at the centre are still the privileges and resulting entitlement inherent in being exempt at the end of the day from truly confronting any of the conversations around these. all on top of stuff like, what makes a good person? morality? who gets to decide for you and who doesn’t? when is it wrong to want someone else to decide for you? what are the things we perform and pretend at, and is it automatically freedom when we’re allowed to abandon them? is to be uninhibited truly to be liberated? what does desire mean in an act designed for submission to such an abstract emotion? who knows. i feel like kicking over a recycling bin, mostly.

the prose was a really nice surprise, though! more precise than poetic yet still a contained kind of greedy to be beautiful, familiar next to how i formulate my own thoughts, secure in its flow and its tone and its perpetual probing introspection, its vaguely self-flagellating awareness. it’s probably a huge part of why i think this book is headed towards my internal hall of fame, and also the main agent behind how the writing glues together all these difficult, unsympathetic, morally disinterested/detached things and makes it into a story about one woman’s life and the things that feel true only to who she is. i can’t really resent how this book refuses to be universal as much as it refuses to be one dimensional, and i even admire willfully writing characters that are so… not unlikeable per se, though they are, but more so uninterested in doing right and being right bc they just—exist. they just do what they do, and they shamelessly, gratuitously, unapologetically take the benefits they want from it. everything else is a moot point. there’s a balancing act element in all of this that i’m impressed by, especially with how ultimately psychological the philosophizing of the novel is. could not be me for sure, but that’s likely why i found it both nauseating and fascinating.

potentially a candidate for one of my fav books of the year yet also somehow the most stressful White Queer Woman In Her 20s Living A Listless Life In Some Major City novel i’ve read so far oh my god

stressful bc it was difficult—all the questions it asks and the answers it purports to provide through the lens of a total power exchange dom/sub dynamic, all the angles it presents and tries to justify even as it indulges a more objective understanding of them, all the dead ends it had to purposely seek to give me a proper and complete tour of the cartography it’s dealing with—and the end result was me gripping the railings on a rope bridge even as i skipped through three other novels that technically should have put me under more emotional duress. can’t even honestly say i kept going with this one out of anything so pure as interest or investment or anything close to entertainment; i was agonizing the whole time, if anything, over this need to shake the characters a little and tell them to please get up and be serious. i think at some point i even started feeling personally challenged by the hypothetical that if i met someone like nathan i real life, i’d remain unfazed—which i want to believe i would, but it also wouldn’t be fair if i didn’t admit that some of the red flags the main trio wore weren’t also on me in some form, in no small amount. 

there’s a thought here as well about how this is a book about sex and sexuality and carnal dynamics and The Body As A Visual Object, more along the vibes of eve babitz and john berger than sally rooney, but it’s exactly the specificity that the focus retained the whole time that highlights to me how maybe white, financially comfortable individuals just… don’t encode distrust in social dynamics the way others outside their experience do? distrust isn’t the best word bc that might be doing eve a disservice, but it felt like an experience particular to her kind of character for a line like this to apply: We love what disturbs us if it chooses us and tells us we matter. Don’t we love a cashed check, a passport, the touch of a president’s hand, though each pleasure rests on a cruelty just beyond our sight? The finger points, without equivocating, at us, and we wonder at being chosen. a story that can spotlight the special-ness of an individual at the expense of its costs and present it as this grotesque but nonetheless sanctifying thing seems to me distinct to a story that doesn’t involve someone who’s Been collateral damage, or knows someone who has, or comes from a community that has continually been the very cost people are happy to pay. it’s a point of discussion in itself that this book tries its best to cover all the bases, to acknowledge what it knows and what it doesn’t and what it can and never will know, and even still its narrator is complicit in the things the story allows to remain implicit. it’s not like i begrudge the narrative that, either, just that it reinforces what a luxury it is for this book to remain primarily about sex and sexual dynamics. although it tries to tackle everything it ropes into its background (queerness, defining and doing right by feminism, power dynamics, class) at the centre are still the privileges and resulting entitlement inherent in being exempt at the end of the day from truly confronting any of the conversations around these. all on top of stuff like, what makes a good person? morality? who gets to decide for you and who doesn’t? when is it wrong to want someone else to decide for you? what are the things we perform and pretend at, and is it automatically freedom when we’re allowed to abandon them? is to be uninhibited truly to be liberated? what does desire mean in an act designed for submission to such an abstract emotion? who knows. i feel like kicking over a recycling bin, mostly.

the prose was a really nice surprise, though! more precise than poetic yet still a contained kind of greedy to be beautiful, familiar next to how i formulate my own thoughts, secure in its flow and its tone and its perpetual probing introspection, its vaguely self-flagellating awareness. it’s probably a huge part of why i think this book is headed towards my internal hall of fame, and also the main agent behind how the writing glues together all these difficult, unsympathetic, morally disinterested/detached things and makes it into a story about one woman’s life and the things that feel true only to who she is. i can’t really resent how this book refuses to be universal as much as it refuses to be one dimensional, and i even admire willfully writing characters that are so… not unlikeable per se, though they are, but more so uninterested in doing right and being right bc they just—exist. they just do what they do, and they shamelessly, gratuitously, unapologetically take the benefits they want from it. everything else is a moot point. there’s a balancing act element in all of this that i’m impressed by, especially with how ultimately psychological the philosophizing of the novel is. could not be me for sure, but that’s likely why i found it both nauseating and fascinating.

rowan !

i've never hated the way i've related to a character as much i hate that i relate to olivia. two morally questionable, queer people questioning who they are, who happen to get so indulged with a white man, they lose sense of reality. don't call me out like that lillian!

but in all seriousness, this one took a lot of me to digest. i spent a good hour and a half just so transfixed by these characters, just thinking "who the hell am i supposed to root for in this?" it was a trick question this whole time. you're supposed to root for no one! not a single person. i'd highly recommend; i think everyone needs to feel what i'm feeling

Kate

technically only read the last 2/3 of this book but let’s just say…. not good… not good baby 

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman

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Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman

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Join the club

Genesis (@whisperingchapters) &
Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman