Emily Maguire has a breathless talent and a fascination with the cloying nausea of intoxication. This is a book which forces you to throw back a full tequila shot then immediately demand another two.
I had equal parts of fascination and revulsion for Sarah Clark. Maguire claims that Sarah is profoundly unsure of herself, yet I was profoundly unsure of Sarah as I was forced to witness her spiral into self-degradation. Maguire’s writing is so powerful, so disturbing that I found myself alternating between almost throwing the book across the room and desperately trying to finish it. I can’t remember when a book affected me so violently.
It is not a comfortable read. It is by turns tender then repellent and ferocious. But it is insistent; it demands to be read. Maguire skilfully manipulates your emotions so that you become as confused about Sarah as she is about herself. The pace is relentless, but for me the book became progressively more difficult to read as it became darker, so much so that I began to question why it was that I was so gripped by it.
It can only be testament to Maguire’s abilities as a writer to elicit this compulsion alongside such uncomfortable voyeurism and raw abhorrence.
This is a book that you need to judge for yourself and decide whether it is gratuitously exploitative or searingly honest. Having finished it I still can’t decide, but I know that it will stay with me for a long while to come.
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