About the Book
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?
Format: eARC (192 pages) Publisher: époque press
Publication date: 13th July 2023 Genre: Contemporary Fiction
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My Review
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 to stop someone 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. ‘It’s like seeing a once terrifying dog – a dog that was formerly all muscle and teeth and rage, 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.’
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.
My thanks to Seán at époque press for my digital review copy.
In three words: Thought-provoking, poignant, powerful
About the Author
Effie 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. In Defence of the Act is Effie’s debut novel. (Photo: Publisher author page)
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About the Book
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