Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. All of this to say is that I can deal with and even appreciate characters who for whatever reason do, think, or say things that are ‘frowned’ upon or downright evil. She obsessively takes explicit photographs of average-looking men she scouts from the streets of Newcastle while her dead-end bar job slips away; she’s more interested in drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. Irina has a sexual encounter where the partner doesn’t listen to her when she says she wants to be on top. i expected this to be a really interesting read, but it was just 264 pages of following the thoughts of a protagonist.

Do I have to smash a glass over the head of every single man I come into contact with, just so I leave a fucking mark? Densely packed mayo, jiggling about, doesn’t know what to do with its arms, doesn’t know what to do with its feet, undulating loosely, barely in time to the rhythm. Flo (i had to check her name, that's how memorable she is) is a rip off of Reva from MYORAR who exists to be the classic female friend in love with our female protagonist who does not and will not ever reciprocate her feelings. if you are incensed by reviewers expressing an opinion that differs from your own one, you are better off skipping this review (this includes you too eliza…). I also didn't really like the dialogue which I thought was formatted a little weird and maybe could have been a little more realistic?

Funnily enough the story’s numerous floundering attempts at edginess, but these feel dated and painfully affected, on the lines of Awad's Bunny or Mariana Enríquez who at least do not settle for mid-tier levels of offensive but f*cking commit. There’s something dangerous about the character and the way that she approaches the world, Joyce thinks.

Still, the one thing that has tripped Clark up is the thought that people might project Irina on to her. Irina, a beautiful twentysomething, picks up mediocre-looking men in places such as Tesco and photographs them in compromising positions. But when it's done right, it can add an extra layer to the story, focusing you to squint your eyes and study the plot through a smeary lens. Some characters come across as heavy-handed attempts at capturing a certain type of person, while either serve no function other than to exist so the narrator can prove to the readers how nasty she is. please do not confuse my negative review of this book as a personal attack on the author or as an estimation of the author herself as i do not know her in any capacity whatsoever.It has sold more than 30,000 copies in the UK and gained a huge following on TikTok, with readers posting their favourite quotes. I spent 200 pages in the head of someone I loathed and I don't feel, personally, like I got anything out of the experience. from here, we see glimpses of her past in fleeting hallucinatory and hazy flashbacks where there is no definitive line between imagination and reality. For an author whose entire online presence is built on wokeness (I found this book through her Guardian interview and then her twitter) there’s some problematic shit in here. Its why books such as In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado have been talked about as important for reminding people that abuse can happen even in relationships that we are championing.