Book Review: Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman

A debut novel of lesbian erotica and submission

** 2/3 **

Acts of Service by Lillian Fishman

Tying up loose ends is one of my mantras for the start of this New Year.  It should be the essence of me, and should have been for some time now, but here we go.  There is something about the coming finality of divorce, and the clear and certain arrival of my vagina in 78 days, that is having this effect on me.  

The future is clear.  The future is silent.

One such loose end is the enormous stack of books that I have read, enjoyed, and not reviewed.  This is one of them.

In a nutshell, the story is narrated by a young lesbian woman living in the City who is bored in her relationship, struggling with how perfect her partner is.  Out of her boredom springs a random act of posting nudes of herself online.

This results in contact from another woman who asks to meet her, and they do.  But the device ultimately serves to introduce her to a man.  Threesome?  Sort of.

The book explores the submissive dynamic between this new woman and the man who she loves, and who the narrator comes to love and becomes entangled with.  The “perfect” girlfriend of the narrator turns out to be having an affair, and is clearly not so perfect, but is also having an affair because of the same ennui.

The submissive girlfriend is a hanger on, a bit like a dog, with that kind of loyalty towards this man, who is dismissive of her need for him.  He is rich, powerful, good looking.  An unpleasant trope.

The author does a beautiful job of bringing these characters to life, of making them real, of making the situations real.  The desire, anguish, frustration, and the unhealthy dynamic which exists between all of them is palpable and very beautiful.  I look forward to her future writing, as she is very talented.

What did I not like about it?  Things which might simply reflect on me.  I didn’t like the central role of the man in what is ostensibly meant to be, or that I understood to be, lesbian fiction.  The book feels very autobiographical in its naturalness, and so raises some uncomfortable themes about sexuality and desire.  In that sense, it felt formulaic, a romance novel that was just more twisted and dark, and ultimately about the fraught political landscape around sex that might exist in any of us.

The book has stayed with me, haunted me, frustrated me.  And in that sense, it must be a good book for it to do that, even if I didn’t love it.  It isn’t titillating or cathartic in a sense of personal justice.  It is a novel about three women, grappling with their own existence and all the self-effacing ways their desire manifests, and this confident, entitled, perfectly self-possessed man.  It is a reflection of the reality of what society does to us. Isn’t that what great art is supposed to do?  To make us think?  To make us uncomfortable?

This book did that.  It still bugs me.  

The title is what has confused me most.  “Acts of Service.”  I think of this within the context of love languages.  Also about how I feel, how I love, how I express myself.  The implication of the title is that these women are doing the same, and yet it is as if they are not conscious of it, their service is not an active choice, or appreciated.  It just is.

I recommend it.  If any of you have read it, I would love to know what you think.