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A review by jasminenoack
A Kind of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth
5.0
This book is about a crazy person, and I don't mean a little bit of a crazy person a super crazy person. Say hello to Annie, weirdly my mother's name is also annie, perhaps that is not weird. Annie has a crazy father, and from what I can tell had an extremely loving husband up until she went and fucked that up too. No totally seriously her husband seems like a really great guy who is willing to put up with basically anything as long as he get to be with her. She is totally unappreciative of that. Annie is socially, well inept would be the nice way to put it. Lets go with schizotypal perhaps. Certainly sociopathic.
Regardless lets talk about the book, or at least pretend to. Basically I read the summary of this book and decided certain events had occurred, then 2/3s of the way through the book was worried that such events actually hadn't occurred, reread the jacket seeing it said nothing of these events. But no worries all eventually everything I was expecting to happen in this book did and I enjoyed every moment of it.
The book is a bit of an experiment in character development, the Annie you meet in the first few pages is not the same Annie that you walk away from the book with. Part of the problem being a completely unreliable narration that forces you to question everything that has occurred in the entire book. It is very clear that Annie is telling the entire story after the fact and seeing how by the end you are forced to question everything that she says it is hard to know what to think about the entire book. There were moments when I just couldn't tell what was going on at all. But in the end I enjoyed it and it all turned out for the best.
Here is a toast to another great British attempt to humanize the criminal mind. Although a comparatively much more creepy one.
addendum:
I have decided that this review is complete crap and it isn't that I am trying to float it just that I think I completely missed some of the very important points of the book.
This book is about people I find generally disgusting, basically a morbidly obese person who thinks that is super sexy, or what she says is "some men like that". In her social ineptitude she fails to mention the men she knows that like that have creepy feeder fetishes(I mean these are basically as creepy if not worse than furry fetishes), I am not sure she is aware of this. This leads to part of the creepiness of the book. Several times Annie talks about how she is so good in social situations and explains how other events have lead to her talent. This talent manifests as her cutting herself on purpose and hiding in the kitchen during her party, and believing next door neighbors who are in happy relationships are completely in love with her. Social talents my ass.
Okay I don't know if I am done yet, but I feel much better about this review now.
The book is a bit of an experiment in character development, the Annie you meet in the first few pages is not the same Annie that you walk away from the book with. Part of the problem being a completely unreliable narration that forces you to question everything that has occurred in the entire book. It is very clear that Annie is telling the entire story after the fact and seeing how by the end you are forced to question everything that she says it is hard to know what to think about the entire book. There were moments when I just couldn't tell what was going on at all. But in the end I enjoyed it and it all turned out for the best.
Here is a toast to another great British attempt to humanize the criminal mind. Although a comparatively much more creepy one.
addendum:
I have decided that this review is complete crap and it isn't that I am trying to float it just that I think I completely missed some of the very important points of the book.
This book is about people I find generally disgusting, basically a morbidly obese person who thinks that is super sexy, or what she says is "some men like that". In her social ineptitude she fails to mention the men she knows that like that have creepy feeder fetishes(I mean these are basically as creepy if not worse than furry fetishes), I am not sure she is aware of this. This leads to part of the creepiness of the book. Several times Annie talks about how she is so good in social situations and explains how other events have lead to her talent. This talent manifests as her cutting herself on purpose and hiding in the kitchen during her party, and believing next door neighbors who are in happy relationships are completely in love with her. Social talents my ass.
Okay I don't know if I am done yet, but I feel much better about this review now.