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In Defence of the Act
Are we more like a coffee bean, a carrot or an egg? What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life?
Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes such acts may not be that bad after all. Or at least, she did.
Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when a single event throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?
‘In death obsessed scientist Jess, Effie Black has created one of the freshest, most engaging characters I’ve encountered in years. In Defence of the Act is a whip-smart exploration of what it means to truly live. Fresh, thought-provoking and, at times, surprisingly funny.�
Laura Wilkinson(Author of Skin Deep)'A hilarious, poignant and uplifting essay on the benefits of suicide (or so you would believe)'
Indira Varma (Women's Prize Judge)
Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes such acts may not be that bad after all. Or at least, she did.
Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when a single event throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?
‘In death obsessed scientist Jess, Effie Black has created one of the freshest, most engaging characters I’ve encountered in years. In Defence of the Act is a whip-smart exploration of what it means to truly live. Fresh, thought-provoking and, at times, surprisingly funny.�
Laura Wilkinson(Author of Skin Deep)'A hilarious, poignant and uplifting essay on the benefits of suicide (or so you would believe)'
Indira Varma (Women's Prize Judge)
207 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2023
43 people are currently reading
2,892 people want to read
About the author
Effie Black
2Ìýbooks45ÌýfollowersEffie Black is a London-based writer with a background in science. She enjoys writing from a queer perspective and she likes bringing a spot of science into her fiction too.
Effie’s short stories have appeared in Litro and the époque press é-zine. Her debut novel, In Defence of the Act, was released in July 2023.
Effie’s short stories have appeared in Litro and the époque press é-zine. Her debut novel, In Defence of the Act, was released in July 2023.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 225 reviews
March 6, 2025
This book left me speechless.
👉 Check out my on BookTube. 👈
This book also features in my BookTube deep dive on . 👀
"I am again reminded that I am different, that I don't see things the way other people do."
Jessica Miller is fascinated by how some humans choose to end their own lives, and she secretly believes this act in certain circumstances can be beneficial. Her favorable view of the act is supported by scientific fact and personal experience, but her beliefs are about to be tested.
In Defence of the Act is absurdly funny, sensual and surprising, devastating and unexpected. Amid Jessica recounting personal experiences and exploring her queerness, a mystery unfolds, and I guarantee that every time you think you know what’s happening, Effie Black throws another curveball your way.
It's been a while since a book made me laugh and toyed with my heart in equal measure. And that ending. WOW! The final pages left me in awe.
â�I cannot recommend this book highly enough!â�
👉 Check out my on BookTube. 👈
This book also features in my BookTube deep dive on . 👀
"I am again reminded that I am different, that I don't see things the way other people do."
Jessica Miller is fascinated by how some humans choose to end their own lives, and she secretly believes this act in certain circumstances can be beneficial. Her favorable view of the act is supported by scientific fact and personal experience, but her beliefs are about to be tested.
In Defence of the Act is absurdly funny, sensual and surprising, devastating and unexpected. Amid Jessica recounting personal experiences and exploring her queerness, a mystery unfolds, and I guarantee that every time you think you know what’s happening, Effie Black throws another curveball your way.
It's been a while since a book made me laugh and toyed with my heart in equal measure. And that ending. WOW! The final pages left me in awe.
â�I cannot recommend this book highly enough!â�
March 23, 2024
Longlisted for 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction - This book is about suicide ... Now read the title again.
"We think we're special but we're not. We're animals and then we're dust."
Yes, this book is uncomfortable to read, especially in the first half. It reminded me of 'A Little Life,' and then it had a chapter about 'A Little Life,' so Effie Black knows exactly what she is doing.
I think it is a more dangerous book to read for depressed people, which says a lot about it. Why? Because it feels so rational, especially until you understand where the story is going.
It certainly feels like a debut novel. The first chapter had almost the structure of a Twitter thread, and chapter by chapter, it continued to evolve and discover the right place to tell this story. It took a lot of time until it felt like fiction. Things became too predictable in the second half, but I really appreciate the novel for trying to do something different, even if only partially succeeded.
This is a must read if the subject isn't too much.
"We think we're special but we're not. We're animals and then we're dust."
Yes, this book is uncomfortable to read, especially in the first half. It reminded me of 'A Little Life,' and then it had a chapter about 'A Little Life,' so Effie Black knows exactly what she is doing.
I think it is a more dangerous book to read for depressed people, which says a lot about it. Why? Because it feels so rational, especially until you understand where the story is going.
It certainly feels like a debut novel. The first chapter had almost the structure of a Twitter thread, and chapter by chapter, it continued to evolve and discover the right place to tell this story. It took a lot of time until it felt like fiction. Things became too predictable in the second half, but I really appreciate the novel for trying to do something different, even if only partially succeeded.
This is a must read if the subject isn't too much.
April 13, 2024
Nominated for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024
An excellent debut by Effie Black: The act referenced in the title is suicide, and protagonist Jessica Miller is a scientist researching why people end their lives - her work is based on the assumption that the decision to unalive oneself can be morally right. As the text unfolds, we learn how she came to draw this questionable conclusion, and how her scientific studies might be in sync with or contradict her personal experience. The construction of the story is very smart, as the whole thing is told in anecdotal flashbacks interspersed with short vignettes that, as soon becomes clear, depict a funeral - but who is going to die as the novel progresses? I, for once, was successfully mislead and made the wrong assumptions.
And that is an important point of text: How we can all err regarding the people close to us, how we can miss clues or misinterpret statements and events - until we find them dead. Narrator Jessica grew up in an abusive household, she ponders how trauma changes biology and how the people inflicting trauma can indefinitely burden others. Not only do we learn about her parents and siblings, no, she also tells the stories of friends and acquaintances, with suicide being a recurring theme. And then, there is her love story with Jamie, which is smartly employed to juxtapose the decision to end one's life with the decision to create life.
Black tackles many controversial topics as she shows Jessica, the natural scientist, trying to apply biological research while pondering moral questions, emotional states, and ultimately even (sexual) identity. Also, I particularly enjoyed the book club scene: While the novel discussed is never mentioned by name, it's clearly , a highly controversial text (that I happen to love) which shows extreme trauma with queer protagonists and also discusses suicide in a very provocative way - in Black's rendition, the discussion partly reads like a parody of the public outrage that came down on author .
Unfortunately, "In Defence of the Act" needs a little time to pick up speed, and the ending is cheapened by a highly conventional trope that wouldn't have been necessary or could have been played slightly differently, in a more unconventional way more befitting to Jessica.
But all in all, this was intriguing, captivating, and very smart. Well done, Women's Prize.
An excellent debut by Effie Black: The act referenced in the title is suicide, and protagonist Jessica Miller is a scientist researching why people end their lives - her work is based on the assumption that the decision to unalive oneself can be morally right. As the text unfolds, we learn how she came to draw this questionable conclusion, and how her scientific studies might be in sync with or contradict her personal experience. The construction of the story is very smart, as the whole thing is told in anecdotal flashbacks interspersed with short vignettes that, as soon becomes clear, depict a funeral - but who is going to die as the novel progresses? I, for once, was successfully mislead and made the wrong assumptions.
And that is an important point of text: How we can all err regarding the people close to us, how we can miss clues or misinterpret statements and events - until we find them dead. Narrator Jessica grew up in an abusive household, she ponders how trauma changes biology and how the people inflicting trauma can indefinitely burden others. Not only do we learn about her parents and siblings, no, she also tells the stories of friends and acquaintances, with suicide being a recurring theme. And then, there is her love story with Jamie, which is smartly employed to juxtapose the decision to end one's life with the decision to create life.
Black tackles many controversial topics as she shows Jessica, the natural scientist, trying to apply biological research while pondering moral questions, emotional states, and ultimately even (sexual) identity. Also, I particularly enjoyed the book club scene: While the novel discussed is never mentioned by name, it's clearly , a highly controversial text (that I happen to love) which shows extreme trauma with queer protagonists and also discusses suicide in a very provocative way - in Black's rendition, the discussion partly reads like a parody of the public outrage that came down on author .
Unfortunately, "In Defence of the Act" needs a little time to pick up speed, and the ending is cheapened by a highly conventional trope that wouldn't have been necessary or could have been played slightly differently, in a more unconventional way more befitting to Jessica.
But all in all, this was intriguing, captivating, and very smart. Well done, Women's Prize.
April 4, 2024
Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction
I’m alone in these thoughts, alone in my field. Every one of my colleagues took up the study of suicide with the aim of eventually contributing to its prevention. I’ve come to realise I entered into it with the aim of contributing to its defence.
This is a brave and challenging novel - one I find hard to write about as it strays into painful areas where I've no experience. The narrator, Jessica, now in her mid 30s, is an evolutionary psychobiologist, researching the field of animals that self-destruct for various reasons, specialising in a type of spider where barren females will sometimes bite off their own legs and die.
At this point I should share that evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary biologists � and I say this as an evolutionary psychobiologist � are storytellers. We’re fantasists. Everything we conclude is made up. We observe things, and hopefully the observations themselves are not made up. But the inferences we make are. Of course they are. How on earth can we ever know exactly why animals do the things they do? [...] We can’t. We see the what and we invent the why. And as new observations come in, we hope the new stories we invent might get closer to the truth. But they’re
still stories. I’m not saying we do it deliberately, but when we attribute meaning to an observation, we can only work with what we already know and have experienced. Inevitably our findings will more often than not uphold the status quo, or more correctly, our own beliefs.
So when this auto-cannibalistic little critter was discovered, the male scientists involved decided, perhaps you might argue naturally, that the reason for their suicidal behaviour was that the older females recognised they no longer had a use, a function, a meaning. They were old and ugly and past it and barren, no male spider would ever look at them in that way again, so why not just eat off all of their own legs? Makes total sense.
Except there’s more to the story. After university I joined the group that twenty years previously had discovered this spider’s strange behaviour. Although my work was largely focused on a scorpion species at the time, I found myself becoming deeply fascinated by this special money spider. And only partly because the scorpions and larger spiders in the lab scared the absolute crap out of me. I convinced my supervisor to let me build a few chapters centered around Atypena lentili into my PhD thesis, and I watched them. I watched and I watched. And I found that not all old and barren Atypena lentili females kill themselves. In fact, only a particular type do. That type is the female located close to its female kin, which in nature may not occur frequently, but in the lab often does, and still receiving male attention. Only in these cases does the spider get hungry for its own legs. If no other females are present, she lets the males waste their time trying to fertilise non-existent eggs and carries on living. If she’s surrounded by kin, but the male spiders are ignoring her in favour of those kin, she hangs around to watch. But if she thinks she’s getting in the way of her genes being passed on, getting in the way not by being an old hag, but an irresistible old hottie, she does herself in. Evolutionarily, this makes far more sense than the arguably ageist and sexist initial interpretation. Rather than thinking life is pointless without a man, the older female’s sacrifice actively increases the chances of passing on genes she shares.
Her underlying thesis is that suicide is an altruistic act, designed to ensure the greatest likelihood of the survival of the gene pool to which the individual is associated. Her motivation to enter thi field, and indeed the belief she wants to prove, comes from three acts of attempted or actual suicide, or ultimately fatal self-harm, in which she was personally involved, and relays to the intended reader (whose identity only becomes clearer later in the novel) in harrowing detail. The first of these is the attempted suicide, via an overdose, of her (physically not sexually) abusive father which, many years later, she now actually regrets having prevented.
The trauma of her father's mistreatment of her mother has impacted the lives of her and her two younger siblings in different ways, and while she would claim to be least impacted, it did cause the break up of a long-term relationship with her girlfriend, Jamie, as Jessica was unable to envisage surrogage parenting.
The story is also broken up with chapters in italics, each titled 'A Black Day', describing an event which is clearly a funeral, but whose funeral is not clear.
And the novel takes a more hopeful twist in the latter third (but not without some more dark events to come), as a baby, Savannah, does unexpectedly come in to Jessica's life and cause her to question her choices, if not necessarily her theories.
Now none of this sounds like me, I know. It sounds like someone else, someone normal, someone I admire, someone I want to be. So, who am I now? The calmer past few months have allowed me not only to sleep but also to ponder this question. Am I someone new? Or have I always been this person and I just didn’t recognize it before? Wasn’t I cold and hard and broken and warped and full of regret and obsessed with death and suicide? Wasn’t I a person who couldn’t decide whether saving a life was the worst thing I’d ever done? Wasn’t that who I was until Savannah came along? Or have I been telling myself the wrong story? And if I made choices based on that story, based on who I thought I was, but I was wrong about that story and myself, what about those choices? What about Jamie?
There's a nice spot-the-book book club section as well.
It makes for an odd mixture - both very dark but also redemptive, drawing intelligently on evolutionary science (including the scientific theories behind the evolutionary rationale for homosexuality) but stylistically also close to millennial hetero-female fiction (Rooney, Dolan etc) with a made-for-TV element: there's a bit too much of a 'onimous music plays in background' cinematic foreshadowing with two key scenes with Jessica navigating steep stairs with hot tea, and the reveal of the truth about the 'A Black Day' sections, despite some clues that at first sight suggested otherwise, is the sort of reader manipulation of which I'm not fond.
But ultimately one key test of a novel for me is whether this is something different, and in terms of topic (including the evolutionary psychobiology) this is very original and challenging.
The publisher
époque press is an independent publisher based in Brighton, with connections to Dublin and New York, established to promote and represent the very best in new literary talent.
I'd also add new talent that is approaching the novel, or it's subject matter, from a different angle. I've previously read and reviewed from them: , , , , and , each fascinating and adding something to the standard literary fare.
I’m alone in these thoughts, alone in my field. Every one of my colleagues took up the study of suicide with the aim of eventually contributing to its prevention. I’ve come to realise I entered into it with the aim of contributing to its defence.
This is a brave and challenging novel - one I find hard to write about as it strays into painful areas where I've no experience. The narrator, Jessica, now in her mid 30s, is an evolutionary psychobiologist, researching the field of animals that self-destruct for various reasons, specialising in a type of spider where barren females will sometimes bite off their own legs and die.
At this point I should share that evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary biologists � and I say this as an evolutionary psychobiologist � are storytellers. We’re fantasists. Everything we conclude is made up. We observe things, and hopefully the observations themselves are not made up. But the inferences we make are. Of course they are. How on earth can we ever know exactly why animals do the things they do? [...] We can’t. We see the what and we invent the why. And as new observations come in, we hope the new stories we invent might get closer to the truth. But they’re
still stories. I’m not saying we do it deliberately, but when we attribute meaning to an observation, we can only work with what we already know and have experienced. Inevitably our findings will more often than not uphold the status quo, or more correctly, our own beliefs.
So when this auto-cannibalistic little critter was discovered, the male scientists involved decided, perhaps you might argue naturally, that the reason for their suicidal behaviour was that the older females recognised they no longer had a use, a function, a meaning. They were old and ugly and past it and barren, no male spider would ever look at them in that way again, so why not just eat off all of their own legs? Makes total sense.
Except there’s more to the story. After university I joined the group that twenty years previously had discovered this spider’s strange behaviour. Although my work was largely focused on a scorpion species at the time, I found myself becoming deeply fascinated by this special money spider. And only partly because the scorpions and larger spiders in the lab scared the absolute crap out of me. I convinced my supervisor to let me build a few chapters centered around Atypena lentili into my PhD thesis, and I watched them. I watched and I watched. And I found that not all old and barren Atypena lentili females kill themselves. In fact, only a particular type do. That type is the female located close to its female kin, which in nature may not occur frequently, but in the lab often does, and still receiving male attention. Only in these cases does the spider get hungry for its own legs. If no other females are present, she lets the males waste their time trying to fertilise non-existent eggs and carries on living. If she’s surrounded by kin, but the male spiders are ignoring her in favour of those kin, she hangs around to watch. But if she thinks she’s getting in the way of her genes being passed on, getting in the way not by being an old hag, but an irresistible old hottie, she does herself in. Evolutionarily, this makes far more sense than the arguably ageist and sexist initial interpretation. Rather than thinking life is pointless without a man, the older female’s sacrifice actively increases the chances of passing on genes she shares.
Her underlying thesis is that suicide is an altruistic act, designed to ensure the greatest likelihood of the survival of the gene pool to which the individual is associated. Her motivation to enter thi field, and indeed the belief she wants to prove, comes from three acts of attempted or actual suicide, or ultimately fatal self-harm, in which she was personally involved, and relays to the intended reader (whose identity only becomes clearer later in the novel) in harrowing detail. The first of these is the attempted suicide, via an overdose, of her (physically not sexually) abusive father which, many years later, she now actually regrets having prevented.
The trauma of her father's mistreatment of her mother has impacted the lives of her and her two younger siblings in different ways, and while she would claim to be least impacted, it did cause the break up of a long-term relationship with her girlfriend, Jamie, as Jessica was unable to envisage surrogage parenting.
The story is also broken up with chapters in italics, each titled 'A Black Day', describing an event which is clearly a funeral, but whose funeral is not clear.
And the novel takes a more hopeful twist in the latter third (but not without some more dark events to come), as a baby, Savannah, does unexpectedly come in to Jessica's life and cause her to question her choices, if not necessarily her theories.
Now none of this sounds like me, I know. It sounds like someone else, someone normal, someone I admire, someone I want to be. So, who am I now? The calmer past few months have allowed me not only to sleep but also to ponder this question. Am I someone new? Or have I always been this person and I just didn’t recognize it before? Wasn’t I cold and hard and broken and warped and full of regret and obsessed with death and suicide? Wasn’t I a person who couldn’t decide whether saving a life was the worst thing I’d ever done? Wasn’t that who I was until Savannah came along? Or have I been telling myself the wrong story? And if I made choices based on that story, based on who I thought I was, but I was wrong about that story and myself, what about those choices? What about Jamie?
There's a nice spot-the-book book club section as well.
It makes for an odd mixture - both very dark but also redemptive, drawing intelligently on evolutionary science (including the scientific theories behind the evolutionary rationale for homosexuality) but stylistically also close to millennial hetero-female fiction (Rooney, Dolan etc) with a made-for-TV element: there's a bit too much of a 'onimous music plays in background' cinematic foreshadowing with two key scenes with Jessica navigating steep stairs with hot tea, and the reveal of the truth about the 'A Black Day' sections, despite some clues that at first sight suggested otherwise, is the sort of reader manipulation of which I'm not fond.
But ultimately one key test of a novel for me is whether this is something different, and in terms of topic (including the evolutionary psychobiology) this is very original and challenging.
The publisher
époque press is an independent publisher based in Brighton, with connections to Dublin and New York, established to promote and represent the very best in new literary talent.
I'd also add new talent that is approaching the novel, or it's subject matter, from a different angle. I've previously read and reviewed from them: , , , , and , each fascinating and adding something to the standard literary fare.
August 14, 2024
4,5*
It’s a story, it’s all a story. We decide which bits of our lives have meaning and consequence, which bits to hold on to and use as a guide.
Há uma situação vivida por Jessica aos quatro anos que não deixa de atormentá-la, ainda que tenham passado várias décadas desde então: a de ter encontrado o seu pai a tempo de ser socorrido depois de uma tentativa de suicÃdio. Sabendo agora que ele passou o resto da vida como um homem capaz das maiores violências verbais e fÃsicas com a mulher e os filhos, a narradora pergunta-se se não teria sido melhor o pai ter morrido na altura e, dessa forma, evitado todo o trauma que lhe infligiu a ela, à mãe e aos dois irmãos mais novos, profundamente afectados por aquilo por que passaram. Como psicobióloga evolutiva, elabora a tese de que, tal como há insectos que se matam altruisticamente para o bem da sua comunidade, há pessoas cuja morte autoinfligida é benéfica para aqueles que os rodeiam, porque têm comportamentos condenáveis ou autodestrutivos, como tem ocasião de perceber através de amigos seus.
Every one of my colleagues took up the study of suicide with the aim of eventually contributing to its prevention. I’ve come to realise I entered into it with the aim of contributing to its defense.
“In Defence of the Actâ€� foi um dos candidatos deste ano ao Women’s Prize for Fiction na Grã-Bretanha, paÃs onde até 1961 o suicÃdio era considerado um crime, mas não chegou a ser sequer um dos finalistas. É um livro audacioso e brusco que, apesar de belos momentos de humor, tem uma protagonista sem papas na lÃngua, que se recusa a ser vitimizada e tenta lidar com a pesada bagagem o melhor que sabe, sem grandes rancores, mas a verdade é que o suicÃdio continua a ser um assunto incómodo, um tabu. Acho curioso que uma pessoa possa ler livros de crime em catadupa sem que ninguém a olhe de esguelha, pois não se vê ali um potencial psicopata; mas se outra pessoa ler sobre o suicÃdio, imagina-se logo o pior. E acho que foi por isso que esta obra não avançou como finalista, porque causa realmente inquietação e as pessoas não querem sequer pensar no assunto. Se o homicÃdio é considerado entretenimento, por que não é também o suicÃdio visto como tal? É realmente mais macabro?
Apesar do tema, “In Defence of the Act� não é um livro miserabilista, com uma narradora que fica a lamber as suas feridas. Há um arco narrativo, um amadurecimento, um processar intenso de sentimentos e acontecimentos, que nos dá uma protagonista que chega à última página transformada. Pelo caminho, tem de debater-se com a questão de poder vir a ser uma má mãe e, igualmente importante, qual é o seu papel como cuidadora de um monstro quando ele chega a velho, aquela altura em que a sociedade não quer compreender por que também há idosos que têm os maus filhos que merecem.
I truly don’t think I will be all that upset when he dies. In the years before he fell ill I hardly saw him, and it often felt like the ideal state would never having to see him again. So, I don’t think it’s the death bit that’s the issue for me(�). It’s his life, his life as it is now, that hurts. It’s like seeing a once terrifying dog � (�) a dog that used to mercilessly maul rabbits for fun � on its last legs. I can’t help but grieve the lost power, and pity what now stands in its place.
Há uma metáfora contada logo no inÃcio sobre o que acontece a uma cenoura, a um ovo e a um grão de café quando são postos a ferver em água. Qual deles nos representa quando somos submetidos a um sofrimento tremendo? A cenoura amolecida, o ovo enrijecido ou o grão de café que passou o seu sabor para a água? No final, Jessica, que sempre se viu como um ovo, descobre que há uma quarta hipótese, uma bela imagem que encerra esta obra com chave de ouro.
Now I don’t know what kind of story it is I’m writing here. (...) I can tell what it isn’t. It isn’t a poor-little-me abuse porno. This isn’t where I describe in minute detail the years of cruelty that made me the warped monster I am today. I won’t paint a vivid picture of suffering to make you thankful for your beige upbringing, or if you were one of the unlucky ones, to act as a trigger.
It’s a story, it’s all a story. We decide which bits of our lives have meaning and consequence, which bits to hold on to and use as a guide.
Há uma situação vivida por Jessica aos quatro anos que não deixa de atormentá-la, ainda que tenham passado várias décadas desde então: a de ter encontrado o seu pai a tempo de ser socorrido depois de uma tentativa de suicÃdio. Sabendo agora que ele passou o resto da vida como um homem capaz das maiores violências verbais e fÃsicas com a mulher e os filhos, a narradora pergunta-se se não teria sido melhor o pai ter morrido na altura e, dessa forma, evitado todo o trauma que lhe infligiu a ela, à mãe e aos dois irmãos mais novos, profundamente afectados por aquilo por que passaram. Como psicobióloga evolutiva, elabora a tese de que, tal como há insectos que se matam altruisticamente para o bem da sua comunidade, há pessoas cuja morte autoinfligida é benéfica para aqueles que os rodeiam, porque têm comportamentos condenáveis ou autodestrutivos, como tem ocasião de perceber através de amigos seus.
Every one of my colleagues took up the study of suicide with the aim of eventually contributing to its prevention. I’ve come to realise I entered into it with the aim of contributing to its defense.
“In Defence of the Actâ€� foi um dos candidatos deste ano ao Women’s Prize for Fiction na Grã-Bretanha, paÃs onde até 1961 o suicÃdio era considerado um crime, mas não chegou a ser sequer um dos finalistas. É um livro audacioso e brusco que, apesar de belos momentos de humor, tem uma protagonista sem papas na lÃngua, que se recusa a ser vitimizada e tenta lidar com a pesada bagagem o melhor que sabe, sem grandes rancores, mas a verdade é que o suicÃdio continua a ser um assunto incómodo, um tabu. Acho curioso que uma pessoa possa ler livros de crime em catadupa sem que ninguém a olhe de esguelha, pois não se vê ali um potencial psicopata; mas se outra pessoa ler sobre o suicÃdio, imagina-se logo o pior. E acho que foi por isso que esta obra não avançou como finalista, porque causa realmente inquietação e as pessoas não querem sequer pensar no assunto. Se o homicÃdio é considerado entretenimento, por que não é também o suicÃdio visto como tal? É realmente mais macabro?
Apesar do tema, “In Defence of the Act� não é um livro miserabilista, com uma narradora que fica a lamber as suas feridas. Há um arco narrativo, um amadurecimento, um processar intenso de sentimentos e acontecimentos, que nos dá uma protagonista que chega à última página transformada. Pelo caminho, tem de debater-se com a questão de poder vir a ser uma má mãe e, igualmente importante, qual é o seu papel como cuidadora de um monstro quando ele chega a velho, aquela altura em que a sociedade não quer compreender por que também há idosos que têm os maus filhos que merecem.
I truly don’t think I will be all that upset when he dies. In the years before he fell ill I hardly saw him, and it often felt like the ideal state would never having to see him again. So, I don’t think it’s the death bit that’s the issue for me(�). It’s his life, his life as it is now, that hurts. It’s like seeing a once terrifying dog � (�) a dog that used to mercilessly maul rabbits for fun � on its last legs. I can’t help but grieve the lost power, and pity what now stands in its place.
Há uma metáfora contada logo no inÃcio sobre o que acontece a uma cenoura, a um ovo e a um grão de café quando são postos a ferver em água. Qual deles nos representa quando somos submetidos a um sofrimento tremendo? A cenoura amolecida, o ovo enrijecido ou o grão de café que passou o seu sabor para a água? No final, Jessica, que sempre se viu como um ovo, descobre que há uma quarta hipótese, uma bela imagem que encerra esta obra com chave de ouro.
Now I don’t know what kind of story it is I’m writing here. (...) I can tell what it isn’t. It isn’t a poor-little-me abuse porno. This isn’t where I describe in minute detail the years of cruelty that made me the warped monster I am today. I won’t paint a vivid picture of suffering to make you thankful for your beige upbringing, or if you were one of the unlucky ones, to act as a trigger.
March 20, 2024
A necessary read.........................
In her debut novel, Effie Black does not shy away from a very hard subject, suicide. Her Jessie sets out to examine the different facets, and she does a good job. Giving a personal subjective view, also a view from further away and the effect on those who live and love close by. In a society which most often shies away from hurt, where reality is rarely looked at straight in the eye, where the hurt of others is met with platitudes and glossed over, this is a breath of fresh air.
Sometimes, I had to stop reading and take a break, not because of the writing but because the subject matter required it. However, Effie Black's voice layers in hard and soft, sadness and laughter, and her coherent whole is a book to read.
In her debut novel, Effie Black does not shy away from a very hard subject, suicide. Her Jessie sets out to examine the different facets, and she does a good job. Giving a personal subjective view, also a view from further away and the effect on those who live and love close by. In a society which most often shies away from hurt, where reality is rarely looked at straight in the eye, where the hurt of others is met with platitudes and glossed over, this is a breath of fresh air.
Sometimes, I had to stop reading and take a break, not because of the writing but because the subject matter required it. However, Effie Black's voice layers in hard and soft, sadness and laughter, and her coherent whole is a book to read.
April 20, 2024
To be honest, I'm a bit upset. I'm not sure I've ever read a book that went so wrong, so quickly, after the three-quarters mark. What happened? Did Effie Black get scared off by her own daring? Did someone steal her MS, a la Yellowface, and quickly scribble out the most conventional ending they could think of given what had come before? So many questions. Anyway, let's dig in.
In Defence of the Act is meant to be about an evolutionary psychobiologist, Jessica, exploring the ethics of suicide; her own childhood trauma leads her to secretly believe that there can be times when killing yourself is the right thing to do. After all, if her abusive dad had succeeded when he first attempted suicide, both she and her two siblings might be considerably less screwed up. Jessica's research focuses on species of spiders where certain individuals kill themselves to ensure the furtherance of either their genes or those of their close relatives, so in this context, suicide can make sense from an evolutionary perspective. In Jessica's own life, she follows the same rule, but flipped: she breaks up with girlfriend Jamie because she doesn't believe she can ever have children because of the fear of becoming her father, but Jamie ought to fulfil her desire of becoming a mother: 'because the world needs more people like her'.
Trouble is, the last quarter or so of this novel tosses all of these difficult questions out the window.
In one long passage near the end of the novel, Jessica digs into the question of why she's a lesbian, saying that she feels she's been this way since birth and it wasn't the result of her father's abuse, or her earlier idolisation of him. Great, totally on board. I don't believe, personally, that all gay people were 'born this way', but it's clearly true for this character, and she rightly attacks the homophobic idea that homosexuality is the result of an abnormal upbringing. But then she goes on to talk about the evolutionary reasons why 'the gay gene' might have survived: '[because of] the effect of gay genes on the survival of the family unit... childless gays, like me, result in more helping hands for nieces and nephews, upping their chances of survival'. I mean, really? I am a childless-by-choice lesbian who loves my niblings, but everything about life does not have to be about biologically related children (one of my niblings is adopted, how does that work?) Black seems to think this challenges the nuclear family, but really it just reinforces the idea that our only true purpose in life is bringing up children. Which obviously from an evolutionary biologist's perspective, is true... but could have been questioned in the same way as Black carefully questions Jessica's earlier views about suicide.
In conclusion, urgh. I felt really cheated by this novel.
In Defence of the Act is meant to be about an evolutionary psychobiologist, Jessica, exploring the ethics of suicide; her own childhood trauma leads her to secretly believe that there can be times when killing yourself is the right thing to do. After all, if her abusive dad had succeeded when he first attempted suicide, both she and her two siblings might be considerably less screwed up. Jessica's research focuses on species of spiders where certain individuals kill themselves to ensure the furtherance of either their genes or those of their close relatives, so in this context, suicide can make sense from an evolutionary perspective. In Jessica's own life, she follows the same rule, but flipped: she breaks up with girlfriend Jamie because she doesn't believe she can ever have children because of the fear of becoming her father, but Jamie ought to fulfil her desire of becoming a mother: 'because the world needs more people like her'.
Trouble is, the last quarter or so of this novel tosses all of these difficult questions out the window.
In one long passage near the end of the novel, Jessica digs into the question of why she's a lesbian, saying that she feels she's been this way since birth and it wasn't the result of her father's abuse, or her earlier idolisation of him. Great, totally on board. I don't believe, personally, that all gay people were 'born this way', but it's clearly true for this character, and she rightly attacks the homophobic idea that homosexuality is the result of an abnormal upbringing. But then she goes on to talk about the evolutionary reasons why 'the gay gene' might have survived: '[because of] the effect of gay genes on the survival of the family unit... childless gays, like me, result in more helping hands for nieces and nephews, upping their chances of survival'. I mean, really? I am a childless-by-choice lesbian who loves my niblings, but everything about life does not have to be about biologically related children (one of my niblings is adopted, how does that work?) Black seems to think this challenges the nuclear family, but really it just reinforces the idea that our only true purpose in life is bringing up children. Which obviously from an evolutionary biologist's perspective, is true... but could have been questioned in the same way as Black carefully questions Jessica's earlier views about suicide.
In conclusion, urgh. I felt really cheated by this novel.
August 21, 2023
I wouldn’t have thought so until quite near the end but this novel reminded me of . Not in the style, not at all, but in containing two parts, the first of which has its protagonist in a soul-repressing frame of thought and existence, and the second in which the protagonist is quite traumatically jolted out of that into grace and agape. Both traumas involve the birth of a child, reflecting the power of life and its creation. They perhaps inadvertently argue for the great redemptive potential of tragedy: if not an answer to the great question of why God would allow terrible things to happen in the world, an illustration of how such things can sometimes produce profound changes on the personal level as one outcome. An uncomfortable argument to be sure.
The book’s protagonist, Jessica, is a researcher in evolutionary psychology who emerged from an abusive childhood with an idea that suicide is a beneficial evolutionary adaptation that increases the well-being of the suicide’s survivors. The seed of this theory was her abusive father’s suicide attempt when she was very young, and the first part of the novel details other situations from her life that she believes back up her theory (though as she also cynically notes, scientists often produce findings that only support their own prior beliefs; a very human tendency not just among scientists that is difficult for one to counter, of course).
On both the professional and personal level Jessica has what you might call an embrace of darkness, of pessimism about herself and a dubiousness of the value of life. She understandably then doesn’t want children and uses her partner’s desire to be a mother as a reason to split up despite them both being very much in love - something of a putting into practice her theory of suicides only on the plane of relationships.
Jamie will be better off without her, she thinks. Jamie can have children with a partner who wants them and thus pass on her genes. At least Jessica’s literal death isn’t required in this instance.
The deep break with all this comes about due to two events, the birth of her niece and, you guessed it, a suicide. Caring for a baby leads her to reevaluate her perspective on herself and beliefs. It can be hard to sustain a deep pessimism when regularly gazing into the face of an infant, hard to devalue life when regularly holding a new one in your arms, perhaps (evolution knows what it’s doing?).
The love surfaced by the baby’s birth changes her, and in combination with a shocking and traumatic suicide jolts her entire belief system.
It makes for a terrific debut novel - philosophical and displaying a hopeful journey from pessimism to a superior widely encompassing love. Which, of course, supports my prior beliefs, so I would say that�
The book’s protagonist, Jessica, is a researcher in evolutionary psychology who emerged from an abusive childhood with an idea that suicide is a beneficial evolutionary adaptation that increases the well-being of the suicide’s survivors. The seed of this theory was her abusive father’s suicide attempt when she was very young, and the first part of the novel details other situations from her life that she believes back up her theory (though as she also cynically notes, scientists often produce findings that only support their own prior beliefs; a very human tendency not just among scientists that is difficult for one to counter, of course).
On both the professional and personal level Jessica has what you might call an embrace of darkness, of pessimism about herself and a dubiousness of the value of life. She understandably then doesn’t want children and uses her partner’s desire to be a mother as a reason to split up despite them both being very much in love - something of a putting into practice her theory of suicides only on the plane of relationships.
I am again reminded that I am different, that I don’t see things the way other people do, that not everyone has something ugly inside them, that not everyone shares my filter, that my colleagues are not all secretly working to justify suicide as I am, that I am the odd one out. I realise that although I haven’t been deliberately hiding, Jamie still hasn’t seen me, the real me, yet. But eventually she will.
Jamie will be better off without her, she thinks. Jamie can have children with a partner who wants them and thus pass on her genes. At least Jessica’s literal death isn’t required in this instance.
The deep break with all this comes about due to two events, the birth of her niece and, you guessed it, a suicide. Caring for a baby leads her to reevaluate her perspective on herself and beliefs. It can be hard to sustain a deep pessimism when regularly gazing into the face of an infant, hard to devalue life when regularly holding a new one in your arms, perhaps (evolution knows what it’s doing?).
Am I someone new? Or have I always been this person and I just didn’t recognize it before? Wasn’t I cold and hard and broken and warped and full of regret and obsessed with death and suicide? Wasn’t I a person who couldn’t decide whether saving a life was the worst thing I’d ever done? Wasn’t that who I was until Savannah came along? Or have I been telling myself the wrong story?
The love surfaced by the baby’s birth changes her, and in combination with a shocking and traumatic suicide jolts her entire belief system.
I’ve changed jobs. I had to. How could I carry on researching suicide day in day out, surreptitiously trying to prove it was often for the best, that families should be somehow grateful for it, that it was in fact on some level done for their benefit? Although I knew better than to publicise them, I was so sure of my ideas, so sure of my work, my purpose, my mission. I was the one who was going to change everything, who would defend the act and make people see the truth, a truth to help them realise they didn’t have to feel sorrow or shame or regret, because evolution is working exactly as it should. I felt certain I was built for revealing this truth. I was sure it was my vocation, and I could never have imagined anything would make me feel differently. It turns out I didn’t have a very good imagination.
It makes for a terrific debut novel - philosophical and displaying a hopeful journey from pessimism to a superior widely encompassing love. Which, of course, supports my prior beliefs, so I would say that�
April 12, 2024
*sigh* this fucking book
I picked this book up for multiple reasons. 1) It is in the longlist of the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2) the title and the summary suggest (we'll come to that) that the story is about suicide and it is a topic I am very interested in, 3) the title suggests that suicide is not demonised, which is somewhat of a requirement for me.
Well colour me the fuck surprised then, when demonising suicidal people is precisely what this book does. While the main character does "defend" the act in the beginning, she does so only from the standpoint of evolutionary biology, which (her theory at least) seems to still be stuck in the age of Darwin. She suggests (there's no hedging, she straight up says this multiple times) that the only reason a person would kill themselves is to "ensure the best possible life for their offspring". So basically, humans subconsciously know when they are "bad" and so, to ensure their genetic material will thrive, all those diddling uncles and abusive fathers and whoever else kill themselves. Now wouldn't that be something. Jessica compares humans to animals and, while the animal kingdom is a great way to find comparable behavioural patterns, not everything is explained by our dear incestual Darwin's evolution theory. Every single suicide or suicide attempt depicted in this book follows this idea that they did it only to protect their offspring. Not only does this narrative demonise suicidal people (they MUST be monsters, right) it is also just so narrow-minded and idiotic. Fuck depression, right? It's made up anyway.
This book also seems to be having multiple identity crises, it simply doesn't know what it wants to be. While the title and the summary suggest a discussion around suicide will be central, that topic really makes up for maybe 15% of the book. The entire story actually revolves around Jessica's abusive father and the subsequent trauma she and her two siblings have. That would be fine, if I hadn't been MISLED. It is this trauma that she uses to justify her pseudoscience theories. But hey, at least Jessica doesn't really have trauma surrounding her homosexuality; that I can appreciate. What I cannot appreciate is authors telling women that they can only be complete when they have a child. Jessica starts out as heavily against having kids of her own but by the end of the book she has one and it is the best thing that has ever happened to her! It made her complete! Big winnings! Now, had the narrative been crafted in a way that Jess didn't want children in her twenties but then changed her mind in her thirties, that would have been very okay. She would have decided for herself, not accidentally getting stuck with a child and then realising she is now a complete and happy person.
I have more gripes with this book, starting from the narration style, which did not suit this sort of story (or rather how Black presented the shallow plot), and ending with the eh, fine I guess?, writing. But I have given this book enough of my time already.
I would be less critical of this novel were it not for one thing.
Now, I decided immediately upon starting this that even if I were to love everything else, if by the end of the book the character goes "yes, suicidal people are actually selfish and suicide is a horrible sin and suicidal people should be stigmatised and be thrown out of society", then I would immediately give it the lowest possible rating. While Jessica did not do so explicitly, the subtext is so clear it might as well have been written down in bold print. She indeed could not defend the act anymore. Well, good for her. Suicide is only okay when it is bad people, right? "Good" people shouldn't even have such thoughts. If they are, it must mean that they're actually evil inside.
Anyway, I know I am ripping into this heavily because of the horrid depiction of suicide, but it truly threw a big shade upon all other aspects. I can't find a single thing I liked, except, perhaps, that there were lesbians. I do love lesbians. But not even they can save this.
I picked this book up for multiple reasons. 1) It is in the longlist of the Women's Prize for Fiction, 2) the title and the summary suggest (we'll come to that) that the story is about suicide and it is a topic I am very interested in, 3) the title suggests that suicide is not demonised, which is somewhat of a requirement for me.
Well colour me the fuck surprised then, when demonising suicidal people is precisely what this book does. While the main character does "defend" the act in the beginning, she does so only from the standpoint of evolutionary biology, which (her theory at least) seems to still be stuck in the age of Darwin. She suggests (there's no hedging, she straight up says this multiple times) that the only reason a person would kill themselves is to "ensure the best possible life for their offspring". So basically, humans subconsciously know when they are "bad" and so, to ensure their genetic material will thrive, all those diddling uncles and abusive fathers and whoever else kill themselves. Now wouldn't that be something. Jessica compares humans to animals and, while the animal kingdom is a great way to find comparable behavioural patterns, not everything is explained by our dear incestual Darwin's evolution theory. Every single suicide or suicide attempt depicted in this book follows this idea that they did it only to protect their offspring. Not only does this narrative demonise suicidal people (they MUST be monsters, right) it is also just so narrow-minded and idiotic. Fuck depression, right? It's made up anyway.
This book also seems to be having multiple identity crises, it simply doesn't know what it wants to be. While the title and the summary suggest a discussion around suicide will be central, that topic really makes up for maybe 15% of the book. The entire story actually revolves around Jessica's abusive father and the subsequent trauma she and her two siblings have. That would be fine, if I hadn't been MISLED. It is this trauma that she uses to justify her pseudoscience theories. But hey, at least Jessica doesn't really have trauma surrounding her homosexuality; that I can appreciate. What I cannot appreciate is authors telling women that they can only be complete when they have a child. Jessica starts out as heavily against having kids of her own but by the end of the book she has one and it is the best thing that has ever happened to her! It made her complete! Big winnings! Now, had the narrative been crafted in a way that Jess didn't want children in her twenties but then changed her mind in her thirties, that would have been very okay. She would have decided for herself, not accidentally getting stuck with a child and then realising she is now a complete and happy person.
I have more gripes with this book, starting from the narration style, which did not suit this sort of story (or rather how Black presented the shallow plot), and ending with the eh, fine I guess?, writing. But I have given this book enough of my time already.
I would be less critical of this novel were it not for one thing.
Now, I decided immediately upon starting this that even if I were to love everything else, if by the end of the book the character goes "yes, suicidal people are actually selfish and suicide is a horrible sin and suicidal people should be stigmatised and be thrown out of society", then I would immediately give it the lowest possible rating. While Jessica did not do so explicitly, the subtext is so clear it might as well have been written down in bold print. She indeed could not defend the act anymore. Well, good for her. Suicide is only okay when it is bad people, right? "Good" people shouldn't even have such thoughts. If they are, it must mean that they're actually evil inside.
Anyway, I know I am ripping into this heavily because of the horrid depiction of suicide, but it truly threw a big shade upon all other aspects. I can't find a single thing I liked, except, perhaps, that there were lesbians. I do love lesbians. But not even they can save this.
May 28, 2024
Taking one’s own life is not an easy subject to write about or to be more clear as I cannot speak for others. It is not an easy topic for me to read. Yet, In Defence of the Act’s first chapter is a good summary of the book itself, from plot to tone.
The narrator, Jessica is attending a meeting, where the speaker is trying to show a meaningful video within a powerpoint and it refuses to work, despite her attempts and calling other people to remedy the situation, the end result is a bored and frustrated audience. After giving up, the speaker decides to tell the story herself. This consists of a carrot, egg and coffee bean thrown in boiling water. The end result is us when faced with life’s problems; are we mushy like the carrot, does our core harden like an egg or do we survive and flavour the water for others like a coffee bean? (spoiler Jessica says she’s an egg)
In Defence of the Act is about suicide although, and I know this seems impossible, Effie Black manages to create set pieces that are actually funny. By saying this I do not mean that the topic is approached as a joke, there are some grim moments but Jessica is an observant narrator who cannot help but comment on society. Be it her queerness or the cast of eccentrics she meets in her life.
As the novel opens we find out that she thinks that suicide is something positive, a way out for a person who cannot mask their feelings about their life. her job, which consists of studying suicidal behaviour in spiders, confirms her philosophy. She then talks about people, close to her who have taken their own life and her opinion changes as she examines the circumstances that led to the act.
In the process, as Jessica, takes us on this journey she also points out that these people also helped her form herself. She comes out through on group of friends, she learns the meaning of true friendship through another. She realises about family dynamics as well. I saw this to mean that a suicidal person may not necessarily be, as depicted in films, the moody outcast who is a negative influence.
As I said before there are grim moments interspersed with tender and humorous ones, not only does the book serve as insightful look at the mind of a suicide victim (is it correct to say victim?) but In Defence of the Act functions as a queer coming of age story. Although the book is not the easiest to read, I think it is an important one as this is the first time I have read about a serious topic, tackled so well. Effie Black has done a fantastic job and as has presented herself as a bold and singular voice who is not afraid to go where others mince about.
The narrator, Jessica is attending a meeting, where the speaker is trying to show a meaningful video within a powerpoint and it refuses to work, despite her attempts and calling other people to remedy the situation, the end result is a bored and frustrated audience. After giving up, the speaker decides to tell the story herself. This consists of a carrot, egg and coffee bean thrown in boiling water. The end result is us when faced with life’s problems; are we mushy like the carrot, does our core harden like an egg or do we survive and flavour the water for others like a coffee bean? (spoiler Jessica says she’s an egg)
In Defence of the Act is about suicide although, and I know this seems impossible, Effie Black manages to create set pieces that are actually funny. By saying this I do not mean that the topic is approached as a joke, there are some grim moments but Jessica is an observant narrator who cannot help but comment on society. Be it her queerness or the cast of eccentrics she meets in her life.
As the novel opens we find out that she thinks that suicide is something positive, a way out for a person who cannot mask their feelings about their life. her job, which consists of studying suicidal behaviour in spiders, confirms her philosophy. She then talks about people, close to her who have taken their own life and her opinion changes as she examines the circumstances that led to the act.
In the process, as Jessica, takes us on this journey she also points out that these people also helped her form herself. She comes out through on group of friends, she learns the meaning of true friendship through another. She realises about family dynamics as well. I saw this to mean that a suicidal person may not necessarily be, as depicted in films, the moody outcast who is a negative influence.
As I said before there are grim moments interspersed with tender and humorous ones, not only does the book serve as insightful look at the mind of a suicide victim (is it correct to say victim?) but In Defence of the Act functions as a queer coming of age story. Although the book is not the easiest to read, I think it is an important one as this is the first time I have read about a serious topic, tackled so well. Effie Black has done a fantastic job and as has presented herself as a bold and singular voice who is not afraid to go where others mince about.
May 3, 2024
To say this was an enjoyable read might be a bit of a misnomer, as In Defence of the Act made me feel all the emotions, all at once. It's the story of Jessica, a scientist who specialises in animal suicide research. It's research that is particularly important to Jessica due to her complex background, resulting in strong opinions of the importance of suicide to promote, ultimately, flourishing societies. Or at least, that's what I took away from Jessica's research.
I loved the way the story unfolds, as Jessica sets the scene of her life going through the several suicides she's witnessed first hand, interjecting with some really interesting facts about suicide in the animal world. There's the parent who lived, which resulted in a range of mental and physical health problems, the friend who didn't but turned out to have a much darker side. Jessica presents these people almost like case studies, demonstrating how they support her hypothesis before there comes a person who doesn't fit this mould.
Jessica is an interesting, multifaceted character who often appears quite clinical and logical at the start of the novel. I saw a lot of myself in her, as someone who thrives on science and facts and is also very socially awkward. For such a short novel, I found her character development to be well done. No words are wasted, there's no tangents. The novel gets to the point, and it feels very much like a story Jessica would write.
This only drops a star because I could see what was coming almost from the get go, meaning the final chapters didn't take me by surprise. I also wasn't overall enamoured with Jessica's sudden change in attitude regarding her research and children. Yes, such a big event can absolutely change a person's outlook on everything however I couldn't help feeling like this took away from Jessica's lifelong, and very valid, opinion on suicide.
This is why I read the women's prize for fiction - to find absolute gems like this.
I loved the way the story unfolds, as Jessica sets the scene of her life going through the several suicides she's witnessed first hand, interjecting with some really interesting facts about suicide in the animal world. There's the parent who lived, which resulted in a range of mental and physical health problems, the friend who didn't but turned out to have a much darker side. Jessica presents these people almost like case studies, demonstrating how they support her hypothesis before there comes a person who doesn't fit this mould.
Jessica is an interesting, multifaceted character who often appears quite clinical and logical at the start of the novel. I saw a lot of myself in her, as someone who thrives on science and facts and is also very socially awkward. For such a short novel, I found her character development to be well done. No words are wasted, there's no tangents. The novel gets to the point, and it feels very much like a story Jessica would write.
This only drops a star because I could see what was coming almost from the get go, meaning the final chapters didn't take me by surprise. I also wasn't overall enamoured with Jessica's sudden change in attitude regarding her research and children. Yes, such a big event can absolutely change a person's outlook on everything however I couldn't help feeling like this took away from Jessica's lifelong, and very valid, opinion on suicide.
This is why I read the women's prize for fiction - to find absolute gems like this.
November 15, 2024
4.5, rounded down.
An astonishingly accomplished debut novel, I can see why it was nominated for the Women's Prize, which is where I (like most people) discovered it. Sadly, it didn't make the shortlist. My only real qualm is from what little I can glean about the author, this seems more like memoir, or perhaps that weird anomaly 'auto-fiction', but I could be completely off-base there. For a book essentially about suicide, it is considerably humorous, and the narrator is such a compelling character; it's an engaging, if not always an easy read. I'd definitely be up for whatever Black comes up with next.
An astonishingly accomplished debut novel, I can see why it was nominated for the Women's Prize, which is where I (like most people) discovered it. Sadly, it didn't make the shortlist. My only real qualm is from what little I can glean about the author, this seems more like memoir, or perhaps that weird anomaly 'auto-fiction', but I could be completely off-base there. For a book essentially about suicide, it is considerably humorous, and the narrator is such a compelling character; it's an engaging, if not always an easy read. I'd definitely be up for whatever Black comes up with next.
April 22, 2024
My favourite of the Women's Prize Longlist so far!
Watch the vlog here:
Watch the vlog here:
March 15, 2024
I read the sample on Amazon because I did not know if I was going to love or not. I was immediately intrigued. I kept on reading on and I was captivated the whole time I was reading, but I think that the ending solidified this for me. I knew I loved the book, but its ending tied everything together in a way that drew home the punch this book was for me
May 3, 2024
A novel that should’ve been shortlisted for the women’s prize for fiction 2024. Whip smart, darkly comedic and tragic � Effie Black’s debut is one of the most of the most original and thought provoking works I’ve read in recent times.
January 12, 2025
finished book, wrote and posted my review, and then immediately realized i feel a completely different way than i initially thought. here is my redo review:
this book catfished me. i totally was under the impression that i had enjoyed it (not a 5 star by any means but nonetheless decent), and it is only because of a strange whiplash-y flash of clarity that i revisited and discovered i actually 🪄thoroughly disliked🪄 it
the latter half of it felt more or less like listening to someone trying to convince you that having children is your one true purpose and the only reliable path to fulfillment and joy. the narrative style was odd and didn’t really add anything of value to the story for me. the whole thing felt tinged with unrealistic elements & it remained fairly shallow to me, despite incorporating a large range of difficult subjects.
anyway if u see my first review and think, “hm, maybe i should pick this up!� � pls don’t be fooled
this book catfished me. i totally was under the impression that i had enjoyed it (not a 5 star by any means but nonetheless decent), and it is only because of a strange whiplash-y flash of clarity that i revisited and discovered i actually 🪄thoroughly disliked🪄 it
the latter half of it felt more or less like listening to someone trying to convince you that having children is your one true purpose and the only reliable path to fulfillment and joy. the narrative style was odd and didn’t really add anything of value to the story for me. the whole thing felt tinged with unrealistic elements & it remained fairly shallow to me, despite incorporating a large range of difficult subjects.
anyway if u see my first review and think, “hm, maybe i should pick this up!� � pls don’t be fooled
July 8, 2023
Exploring the question of whether it can ever be right for a person to take their own life is not necessarily an obvious hook for a work of fiction. However, although the book starts with Jessica’s listing of examples from nature of what you might term altruistic self-murder, it soon becomes clear that this is a much more personal question for her, one which has involved people she has loved. In fact, the dilemma also Jessica grapples with is when is it right toÌýstopÌýsomeone taking their own life.
This may all sound rather depressing and indeed some of Jessica’s experiences are distressing to read about. However Jessica makes for a delightfully spirited narrator but one whose wit is often a mask for underlying feelings of self-doubt and guilt. She constantly questions her own actions and motivations. This is unsurprising as we gradually learn more about the violence that was a feature of her childhood. The sections in which Jessica recalls what it was like to grow up in an abusive household are positively chilling such as her comment that ‘fear didn’t keep regular hours� in her family� but could appear at any moment, even at night. I also found her frequent attempts to downplay what she has been through heart-rending. Among many moving moments is one in which twelve-year-old Jessica is surprised when a classmate suggests they hang out together, and even more surprised that it really is going to happen because of her experience of family trips being regularly cancelled, curtailed or disrupted.
In an example of the way the book deals with issues in a nuanced way, we witness Jessica’s conflicted feelings for the now diminished state of the perpetrator of that abuse.Ìý‘It’s like seeing a once terrifying dog â€� a dog that was formerly all muscle and teeth and rage, a dog that used to mercilessly maul rabbits for fun â€� on its last legs. I can’t help but grieve the lost power, and pity what now stands in its place.â€�
One clever element of the book is that every now and again sections entitled ‘A Black Day� interrupt Jessica recalling of events in her life. It’s fairly clear what the occasion being described is but we don’t find out exactly who it involves until the end of the book. If that sounds rather oblique, it’s deliberate as I don’t want to give anything away.
By the end of the book, I was really invested in Jessica’s life, was left feeling hopeful for her future and convinced she was in no need of the session on resilience that opens the book. An impressive debut.
This may all sound rather depressing and indeed some of Jessica’s experiences are distressing to read about. However Jessica makes for a delightfully spirited narrator but one whose wit is often a mask for underlying feelings of self-doubt and guilt. She constantly questions her own actions and motivations. This is unsurprising as we gradually learn more about the violence that was a feature of her childhood. The sections in which Jessica recalls what it was like to grow up in an abusive household are positively chilling such as her comment that ‘fear didn’t keep regular hours� in her family� but could appear at any moment, even at night. I also found her frequent attempts to downplay what she has been through heart-rending. Among many moving moments is one in which twelve-year-old Jessica is surprised when a classmate suggests they hang out together, and even more surprised that it really is going to happen because of her experience of family trips being regularly cancelled, curtailed or disrupted.
In an example of the way the book deals with issues in a nuanced way, we witness Jessica’s conflicted feelings for the now diminished state of the perpetrator of that abuse.Ìý‘It’s like seeing a once terrifying dog â€� a dog that was formerly all muscle and teeth and rage, a dog that used to mercilessly maul rabbits for fun â€� on its last legs. I can’t help but grieve the lost power, and pity what now stands in its place.â€�
One clever element of the book is that every now and again sections entitled ‘A Black Day� interrupt Jessica recalling of events in her life. It’s fairly clear what the occasion being described is but we don’t find out exactly who it involves until the end of the book. If that sounds rather oblique, it’s deliberate as I don’t want to give anything away.
By the end of the book, I was really invested in Jessica’s life, was left feeling hopeful for her future and convinced she was in no need of the session on resilience that opens the book. An impressive debut.
August 17, 2024
Other reviewers have put this more eloquently. And I’m trying to be less mean in my reviews of books I really don’t like. Welp, maybe next time.
TW: suicide
I was pretty much off-board with this book when she described identifying as non-binary in your thirties as the equivalent of “mutton dressed as lamb� - as I’m about to be one of those myself, I find it really disappointing when someone (from the supposed “community�) shits on genderqueer rep in older adults, as I believe young people need that more than ever to see a future for themselves. She also used the term “Nbi� (as opposed to enby I guess?) and like,,, you know when someone is part of the queer community but not really part of the *queer* community? That. That for so much of this book tbh.
The author (character?) does not connect the dots to the wider systemic reasons behind suicide and instead individualises it to such a depressing degree. The main character is full of moral superiority that is insufferable: the fact that this hinges on one person’s subjective view of what makes a “good� or “bad� person (and so it follows, what makes a “just� or “unjust� suicide) is really the downfall of this book. Although she makes clear that this character has not been to therapy, I would argue that the complete lack of self-reflection makes for a compassionless story, devoid of any tangible emotion or relatability.
Sometimes queer people are just upholding the status quo, even when they believe they’re saying something radical. Sometimes queer people are still normative. That’s this book in a nutshell: not for me.
TW: suicide
I was pretty much off-board with this book when she described identifying as non-binary in your thirties as the equivalent of “mutton dressed as lamb� - as I’m about to be one of those myself, I find it really disappointing when someone (from the supposed “community�) shits on genderqueer rep in older adults, as I believe young people need that more than ever to see a future for themselves. She also used the term “Nbi� (as opposed to enby I guess?) and like,,, you know when someone is part of the queer community but not really part of the *queer* community? That. That for so much of this book tbh.
The author (character?) does not connect the dots to the wider systemic reasons behind suicide and instead individualises it to such a depressing degree. The main character is full of moral superiority that is insufferable: the fact that this hinges on one person’s subjective view of what makes a “good� or “bad� person (and so it follows, what makes a “just� or “unjust� suicide) is really the downfall of this book. Although she makes clear that this character has not been to therapy, I would argue that the complete lack of self-reflection makes for a compassionless story, devoid of any tangible emotion or relatability.
Sometimes queer people are just upholding the status quo, even when they believe they’re saying something radical. Sometimes queer people are still normative. That’s this book in a nutshell: not for me.
March 19, 2024
Longlisted for 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction
Finally a hit from the Women’s Prize this year! I thought that this debut novel was exceptionally well done, tackling such complex and heavy themes such as suicide, familial abuse, depression, queerness, and the general struggles of growing up and trying to find a place in the world. This book discusses what trauma does to a person and how it forever changes the way we move through the world. The discussion about suicide was deliberately provocative but never done in a sensationalist or overly dramatic way. It certainly made me think.
I particularly enjoyed the discussion around queerness in this novel, though I wish a central relationship ended up differently. I liked the portrayal of sibling bonds toward the end, though I wish it had been more a part of the novel from the beginning. There was also one subplot toward the end that I didn’t particularly care for but I see why it was included.
This very much felt like a stream-of-consciousness, almost journal entry type of book, where it’s meandering at times and things don’t fully connect from the beginning to the end, but wow when things connect it was great. Since I saw the ending from a mile away, it didn’t have quite the emotional heft to it that I wished. Nevertheless, I thought this was excellent and I hope Effie Black writes more.
Finally a hit from the Women’s Prize this year! I thought that this debut novel was exceptionally well done, tackling such complex and heavy themes such as suicide, familial abuse, depression, queerness, and the general struggles of growing up and trying to find a place in the world. This book discusses what trauma does to a person and how it forever changes the way we move through the world. The discussion about suicide was deliberately provocative but never done in a sensationalist or overly dramatic way. It certainly made me think.
I particularly enjoyed the discussion around queerness in this novel, though I wish a central relationship ended up differently. I liked the portrayal of sibling bonds toward the end, though I wish it had been more a part of the novel from the beginning. There was also one subplot toward the end that I didn’t particularly care for but I see why it was included.
This very much felt like a stream-of-consciousness, almost journal entry type of book, where it’s meandering at times and things don’t fully connect from the beginning to the end, but wow when things connect it was great. Since I saw the ending from a mile away, it didn’t have quite the emotional heft to it that I wished. Nevertheless, I thought this was excellent and I hope Effie Black writes more.
July 18, 2024
a really powerful, thought-provoking, and heartbreaking read exploring suicide (so major tw!!!). cleverly crafted and well written, this book addresses a really important topic with tenderness, care, empathy and even a touch of humor. the last few chapters ripped my heart out of my chest but it’s fine. i’m fine. 🙂
May 14, 2024
I’m alone in these thoughts, alone in my field. Every one of my colleagues took up the study of suicide with the aim of eventually contributing to its prevention. I’ve come to realise I entered into it with the aim of contributing to its defence.
Wow. This book was VERY personal to me and touched a lot of nerves, but I think anyone will be affected by it.
So, this book is about suicide. Read the title again. Yup.
It reminded me a little of and then there was literally a chapter about the MC, Jessica, reading that at her book club, and how she felt a certain way and felt guilty for her views, until another member of the club says the same thing: 'Why didn't he do it [kill himself] earlier and save everyone such a hard time?' And Jessica feels that, finally, there's someone who understands her, who sees suicide as a functioning part of evolutionary biology, that some people are better off dead and that they understand this and are able to think about the bigger picture and actually go through the act. Jessica feels relieved that someone else shares her view - because it's not a popular one, even though her work is directly about the potential biological advantages of suicide; no one else has ever really felt the way that Jessica has felt for years now, and suddenly, someone is on her side, they see her way of viewing the world.
And then the member of her book group says that she's only kidding, she'd never wish that, but it was affective to stir up some good discussion, wasn't it?
Oh.
Effie Black has done a superb job in talking about this most taboo of subjects. It could be a dangerous book to read if you are depressed or have a history of suicide, so take this as a big Content Warning in case you didn't already need it.
It's an excellent debut novel with a good construction of anecdotal flashbacks and short vignettes that explained where Jessica's views stemmed from, and other events that support them. They all felt (perhaps painfully too) real to me. I really believed in Jessica's character, and even if you don't share her views in the slightest, I think you'll find it hard to disagree with her rational even if you don't share her sentiments. She's a very easy character to relate to.
The structure is also broken up by short chapters each entitled A Black Day which is clearly a funeral, but you really have no idea whose funeral it is until the end. That was really effective, very cleverly done indeed.
In speaking with an evolutionary biologist (handy to have one around for moments like this!), he enjoyed the book and thought it was a good read, but as an evolutionary biologist, he didn't feel that her work was legitimate. He understood her sentiments, but he said in his 40+ year career where he has lived and breathed evolutionary biology, there is no way that the fact that one spider apparently altruistically kills itself when it is past child-bearing age would lead to anyone with knowledge in biology to believe that this could be transposed to humans. One, because we only share a tiny, infinitesimal amount of DNA with this rare, specific spider. Two, because that's not how funding works. However he enjoyed the book and only wished So, there's a kind of 'official' viewpoint if you like: brilliant story, but it shouldn't have involved evolutionary biology.
This is a dark, but also redemptive book, a mixture of laughter and sorrow - yes, there's even humour! Jessica's pessimism does not spread to every corner of her life, and her troubled past does not overshadow everything. I really loved the exploration of queer love, and of sisterly bonding.
A fantastic book, terrific debut. I'm disappointed, although not surprised due to the subject matter and at times the slightly debut-esque nature of Black's writing (only very occasionally!).
Definitely recommend - unless you think you will be triggered. One of the most relatable, believable books that I have read this year.
Wow. This book was VERY personal to me and touched a lot of nerves, but I think anyone will be affected by it.
So, this book is about suicide. Read the title again. Yup.
It reminded me a little of and then there was literally a chapter about the MC, Jessica, reading that at her book club, and how she felt a certain way and felt guilty for her views, until another member of the club says the same thing: 'Why didn't he do it [kill himself] earlier and save everyone such a hard time?' And Jessica feels that, finally, there's someone who understands her, who sees suicide as a functioning part of evolutionary biology, that some people are better off dead and that they understand this and are able to think about the bigger picture and actually go through the act. Jessica feels relieved that someone else shares her view - because it's not a popular one, even though her work is directly about the potential biological advantages of suicide; no one else has ever really felt the way that Jessica has felt for years now, and suddenly, someone is on her side, they see her way of viewing the world.
And then the member of her book group says that she's only kidding, she'd never wish that, but it was affective to stir up some good discussion, wasn't it?
Oh.
Effie Black has done a superb job in talking about this most taboo of subjects. It could be a dangerous book to read if you are depressed or have a history of suicide, so take this as a big Content Warning in case you didn't already need it.
It's an excellent debut novel with a good construction of anecdotal flashbacks and short vignettes that explained where Jessica's views stemmed from, and other events that support them. They all felt (perhaps painfully too) real to me. I really believed in Jessica's character, and even if you don't share her views in the slightest, I think you'll find it hard to disagree with her rational even if you don't share her sentiments. She's a very easy character to relate to.
The structure is also broken up by short chapters each entitled A Black Day which is clearly a funeral, but you really have no idea whose funeral it is until the end. That was really effective, very cleverly done indeed.
In speaking with an evolutionary biologist (handy to have one around for moments like this!), he enjoyed the book and thought it was a good read, but as an evolutionary biologist, he didn't feel that her work was legitimate. He understood her sentiments, but he said in his 40+ year career where he has lived and breathed evolutionary biology, there is no way that the fact that one spider apparently altruistically kills itself when it is past child-bearing age would lead to anyone with knowledge in biology to believe that this could be transposed to humans. One, because we only share a tiny, infinitesimal amount of DNA with this rare, specific spider. Two, because that's not how funding works. However he enjoyed the book and only wished So, there's a kind of 'official' viewpoint if you like: brilliant story, but it shouldn't have involved evolutionary biology.
This is a dark, but also redemptive book, a mixture of laughter and sorrow - yes, there's even humour! Jessica's pessimism does not spread to every corner of her life, and her troubled past does not overshadow everything. I really loved the exploration of queer love, and of sisterly bonding.
A fantastic book, terrific debut. I'm disappointed, although not surprised due to the subject matter and at times the slightly debut-esque nature of Black's writing (only very occasionally!).
Definitely recommend - unless you think you will be triggered. One of the most relatable, believable books that I have read this year.
January 5, 2025
"But this book was different. These tears weren't confined to the privacy of my own home, and they weren't the sort that coult be bravely held back, or even, as is the case for a particularly touching piece of dairy-product marketing, culminate in a single wistful teardrop running down my cheek."
March 7, 2024
This book is why I’ve read the longlist of the Women’s Prize for the last eight years. I would not have picked it up or considered myself the audience and I can’t stop thinking/raving about it. A protagonist with a completely contrary outlook who is so memorable and interesting and nuanced. I loved it and found myself sharing pictures of pages and talking about it. Really brave to write and to paint such a rich woman in Jessica.
May 13, 2024
A unique albeit triggering premise powerfully presented by Effie Black.
Jessica Miller has had a brush too many with suicide one way or the other since she was a little child. On top of that she has lived with domestic parental abuse for many years. All this made her start a PhD in studying spiders who self destruct.
She sets about putting a case across for the reader in favour of suicide. Which she firmly believes is an altruistic act and is better for the universe in the grand scheme of things.
Until one fateful event turns her point of view 180 degrees and the novel that starts as an advocate for suicide ends up being a plea to live.
Wonderfully written. Short chapters and quick, succinct and very compelling narration. Great characters with a super engaging interplay between them. It was pretty addictive reading despite it's trigger heavy content. I was in tears towards the end. A worthy Women's Prize longlister which could very well have been shortlisted.
Jessica Miller has had a brush too many with suicide one way or the other since she was a little child. On top of that she has lived with domestic parental abuse for many years. All this made her start a PhD in studying spiders who self destruct.
She sets about putting a case across for the reader in favour of suicide. Which she firmly believes is an altruistic act and is better for the universe in the grand scheme of things.
Until one fateful event turns her point of view 180 degrees and the novel that starts as an advocate for suicide ends up being a plea to live.
Wonderfully written. Short chapters and quick, succinct and very compelling narration. Great characters with a super engaging interplay between them. It was pretty addictive reading despite it's trigger heavy content. I was in tears towards the end. A worthy Women's Prize longlister which could very well have been shortlisted.
April 2, 2024
Please note: due to the subject matter, events which the MC experiences in her life, and the beliefs which she holds and explores, some readers may find this powerful, thought-provoking and emotional novel - and possibly this review, distressing and triggering - so caution is advisable.
What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life? Does the hot water make us more like a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?
Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes suicide is a good thing, from an evolutionary perspective.
Or at least, she did.
Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when something happens which throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?
Goodness, for a slim novel of only 168 pages, this one packs a powerful emotional, moral, ethical and intellectual punch.
Our narrator, Jessica, has an unforgettable voice and what she says is usually funny and whip smart, sometimes deprecating and dark in theme and subject, whilst her tone is conversational and almost off the cuff.
It is this deceptive, dissonant interplay of narrative style and tone that enables this novel to place the difficult and sensitive topic of suicide front and centre in this novel.
The novel also explores themes of grief and loss, childhood trauma, forgiveness and resilience, and what it means to be the queer family member is also examined as Jessica’s relationships with other women in her life play out.
She is an unforgettable main character and through her eyes we obtain a queer female perspective on what it is like for her as a scientific researcher, daughter, friend, lover and carer.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this novel as I deliberately went in blind. I'm not sure I expected the frank and honest exploration of a really difficult theme (which is still not often easily discussed openly even now), nor Jessica’s unconventional view that suicide could be 'a good thing'; I wasn't expecting the inclusion of so much science which was apt, well explained, easily understood and added an extra dimension, nor was I expecting the humour; but it all works so, so well. Effie Black is a writer of real talent. Her characters are fully realised and she has pulled off an amazing feat.
IDOTA takes you beyond your comfort zone on so many levels, but it made a real impression upon me. It made me think and examine my own attitudes, it made me laugh and it made me cry, and whilst it may seem odd to say this in light if what I have described about this amazing, powerful, thought-provoking and emotional novel, I really, really enjoyed it.
What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life? Does the hot water make us more like a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?
Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes suicide is a good thing, from an evolutionary perspective.
Or at least, she did.
Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when something happens which throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?
Goodness, for a slim novel of only 168 pages, this one packs a powerful emotional, moral, ethical and intellectual punch.
Our narrator, Jessica, has an unforgettable voice and what she says is usually funny and whip smart, sometimes deprecating and dark in theme and subject, whilst her tone is conversational and almost off the cuff.
It is this deceptive, dissonant interplay of narrative style and tone that enables this novel to place the difficult and sensitive topic of suicide front and centre in this novel.
The novel also explores themes of grief and loss, childhood trauma, forgiveness and resilience, and what it means to be the queer family member is also examined as Jessica’s relationships with other women in her life play out.
She is an unforgettable main character and through her eyes we obtain a queer female perspective on what it is like for her as a scientific researcher, daughter, friend, lover and carer.
I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up this novel as I deliberately went in blind. I'm not sure I expected the frank and honest exploration of a really difficult theme (which is still not often easily discussed openly even now), nor Jessica’s unconventional view that suicide could be 'a good thing'; I wasn't expecting the inclusion of so much science which was apt, well explained, easily understood and added an extra dimension, nor was I expecting the humour; but it all works so, so well. Effie Black is a writer of real talent. Her characters are fully realised and she has pulled off an amazing feat.
IDOTA takes you beyond your comfort zone on so many levels, but it made a real impression upon me. It made me think and examine my own attitudes, it made me laugh and it made me cry, and whilst it may seem odd to say this in light if what I have described about this amazing, powerful, thought-provoking and emotional novel, I really, really enjoyed it.
May 1, 2024
For fans of Miriam Toews, Effie Black's Women's Prize-nominated debut novel offers a humorous and heartfelt look at a taboo subject. Main character Jessica is a lesbian scientist in her 30s studying the evolutionary benefits of suicide in nature. Her interest is born of a longstanding familiarity with suicide, as readers learn early on of her father's attempted suicide when she was five years old.
In addition to this, Jessica has a close friend who died of anorexia and a significantly younger sister battling addiction. She has also recently ended a long-term relationship with her former partner, Jamie, due to a disagreement on whether to have children.
Jessica's interests and cynical attitude shift when she decides to help her sister, Freya through pregnancy and child rearing.
This book is fantastic in so many ways. In a sometimes glib tone, Jessica explores the impact suicide has had on her life and its potential benefits (from a scientific perspective) for humanity. This book is by turns profoundly touching and darkly funny. I also loved the fact that Jessica is a lesbian aunt, and felt this book did a great job of explaining and exploring the bond between aunt and niece, which is something you don't see a lot. It's a shame this book didn't make the shortlist, but Effie Black surely has a bright future ahead. I love a small book that packs a punch, and this is definitely a great one.
In addition to this, Jessica has a close friend who died of anorexia and a significantly younger sister battling addiction. She has also recently ended a long-term relationship with her former partner, Jamie, due to a disagreement on whether to have children.
Jessica's interests and cynical attitude shift when she decides to help her sister, Freya through pregnancy and child rearing.
This book is fantastic in so many ways. In a sometimes glib tone, Jessica explores the impact suicide has had on her life and its potential benefits (from a scientific perspective) for humanity. This book is by turns profoundly touching and darkly funny. I also loved the fact that Jessica is a lesbian aunt, and felt this book did a great job of explaining and exploring the bond between aunt and niece, which is something you don't see a lot. It's a shame this book didn't make the shortlist, but Effie Black surely has a bright future ahead. I love a small book that packs a punch, and this is definitely a great one.
December 9, 2023
is this autofiction or fiction fiction? and i really want to know, because this was all so REAL. an epistemological epistolary novel, which is the first such mash-up i've read. there was no other way to write this than in the first person, which only deepens my bewilderment. is Effie Jess? is Jess Effie?
i thought a lot about it between my reading sessions, and have continued to mull it over in the days since i finished. i wanted to know more about Ms Black's reasons for writing the book. so i searched for interviews, podcasts, etc, and there is nothing. i’m shocked, or at least surprised.
i hope this book reaches a wide audience, because a) it's good, and b) it considers suicide from multiple perspectives and angles, without ever resorting to fence-sitting both-sides-ism.
i thought a lot about it between my reading sessions, and have continued to mull it over in the days since i finished. i wanted to know more about Ms Black's reasons for writing the book. so i searched for interviews, podcasts, etc, and there is nothing. i’m shocked, or at least surprised.
i hope this book reaches a wide audience, because a) it's good, and b) it considers suicide from multiple perspectives and angles, without ever resorting to fence-sitting both-sides-ism.
April 6, 2024
Without a doubt one of the best books I've ever read. The subject matter (suic*de) is an incredibly difficult topic to address in any shape or form, but Effie Black manages to talk about it beautifully, with tact, facts, kindness and even humour. It's got to be the saddest funniest book I've read. Or is it the funniest saddest book? The story is captivating (and it includes a lesbian love story) and the writing is simply perfect. It's so light and pleasant that you end up easily reading through a lot more pages in one sitting than you were expecting. It's also the best informal speech I've ever read.
March 17, 2024
There are some provocative questions about suicide posed (although you may sense from minute one that the author is setting up a straw man) and a great deal of extremely pedestrian writing. That the protagonist is a lesbian and has endured childhood abuse does not rescue this book from its telegraphed plot, unconvincing narrator (the idea of her being a scientist seems stuck on - the glimpses of her work (which she misses for huge chunks of time repeatedly) entirely superficial) and juvenile writing about relationships.
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