(Review of an ARC via Netgalley)

I'm not sure there's a way to articulate how this book made me feel. It's the sort of book that you experience rather than read; for the day it took to read it, it really did feel like I was an opera singer in her mid-twenties, entangled in a toxic relationship with a man who might be awful, or might be wonderful, or might be some entirely human combination of the two. I'm rather glad I'm not, all things considered.

Imogen Crimp is one of those writers whose work seems entirely effortless; she can craft a simile unlike anyone I've ever read before, and her observations about people are so incisive and insightful that you wish you'd written them yourself. I was fortunate enough to be able to read extracts from this novel in draft form back in its early days, and it speaks to her talent that there are turns of phrase in here which remain from the earliest versions. They're just that good.

The thing that really sets this book above other novels about toxic relationships is that it's genuinely never clear whether Anna is imagining all the ways in which Max is terrible, if he's just terrible for her rather than in general, or if he really is a complete c-word, as Anna's friend likes to call him. Much of his behaviour, told through the unreliable lens of Anna's narration, seems targeted and insidious, but it's also clear that Anna maps her own thoughts about herself onto his behaviour. She acknowledges this herself. For that reason, you could read this same book over and over again and pick up on all the subtleties and nuances a thousand different ways. There's no villain here, unless there is.

This book is going to win every single award going, and it should. It's frankly one of the best books I've read in years, and it's going to linger for a while.