A review by heelturn2
Nobody, Somebody, Anybody by Kelly McClorey

adventurous emotional funny tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

honestly I was very lukewarm on this book until the absolute last second but

almost dying and then stowing away on a cruise ship because you fucked things up too bad and you’re a complete anxious lonely manipulative mess

and then leaving things wide open for the reader brought it back around for me. like the implications are so dark??? I think it makes the rest of the book work — you spend the whole story waiting for Amy to change, or have a revelation about how to be in the world, and she doesn’t. she’s not actually naïve in the way you think she is at first. instead she runs away instead of dealing with her problems, or realizing that other people like her until she does something unhinged that pushes them away, or extending grace and understanding to people she’s judged or decided have it out for her. she *is* like her mother and she doesn’t really have the introspective ability to see that or get a handle on her emotions and actions. I think what made the book not work for me for the first, idk, 3/4 was the slow pace, & this lack of backstory; like you get very quickly that Amy has Problems, something happened at school, her mother was difficult and sick, but you don’t see much of it or get details, really. it’s just a lot of Amy’s stream of consciousness/mental state. so the primary experience of reading, until the ending, is frustration at where the narration isn’t going and with the minutia of fairly uninteresting detail. and then you realize Amy’s not going there because she isn’t able to. she doesn’t really know how analyze her life like that and she can’t really take responsibility for her shit except in these fleeting moments. and what preoccupies her is overanalyzing a million perceived slights and thinking about her virtuousness and being deeply, deeply lonely and regretful. so 3 stars because I didn’t actually enjoy reading this BUT I think this story & character are kind of secretly compelling.