Can’t relate? Consider yourself lucky
I’m not in the habit of reading reviews of books before I review them myself, but, the moment I hit the Acknowledgements section of Imogen Crimp’s A Very Nice Girl, I found myself with an unfamiliar urge to do so that I was powerless to resist. I needed to know how a book that Sorrow & Bliss (a book I loved) author Meg Mason described as “a cross between Sweetbitter [a book I loved] and Normal People [a book I loved]” got so little traction upon publication (by which I mean: it didn’t go viral in the way those three books did). I loved this book, too, and needed to know if I was in the minority.
The reviews were just above average. Many claimed it was repetitive, a story they’d heard before; others were annoyed at their inability to tell whether the romantic ‘hero’ was toxic or simply careless; many seemed miffed by the ambiguous ending. I struggled to understand those reviewers’ qualms. The reviewers I related to struggled with parts of the book because they felt too close to home; a reminder of what it feels like, particularly in your teens and twenties, to sacrifice parts of yourself to redirect all of your energy towards something (be it a person or a goal) that you know, deep down, will never fulfill you.
Anna is 24, an opera student in a prestigious London conservatory. She’s escaped from a small, suburban life with a hyper-vigilant mother and aloof father in favor of the big city, but doesn’t have the parental support (emotional or financial) that many of her peers benefit from. She’s shares an attic bedroom with her beautiful loose cannon of a frenemy, Laurie, who she describes as her “best friend,” but clearly isn’t; Laurie’s exhausting aggression functions as a tool for bringing Anna’s meek, people-pleasing tendencies into relief.
To make ends meet, Anna spends nights singing jazz in a bar in “the City” (London’s business district, populated heavily with offices and sparsely with residents), where she meets Max, a handsome, distant 38 year-old financier in the midst of a divorce. Max makes it clear from the beginning he’s not interested in something serious, but that doesn’t stop Anna from upending her life for him.
Some complained the book moved too slowly; to me, the pace was purposeful and all too-real. We watch Anna slowly unravel her life, opportunity by opportunity - small ones at first, bigger deals down the road - in favor of a few hours in Max’s company. And once she is with him, we’re forced to sit through the petty arguments she picks (because he’s not giving her what she wants; and she knows he never will), her pleading apologies that follow, and the unsettled, sinking feeling she feels as soon as she parts ways with him. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Many reviewers wrote Max off immediately as a “toxic, abusive, manipulating, gaslighter.” Others claimed they “couldn’t tell if he was just an asshole,” and others still found themselves frustrated by the “victim role” Anna was playing, upending her life for him when he’d asked nothing of the sort from her - in fact, quite the opposite. And that’s part of the point. To Anna, obsessed with external validation (emphasized by the fact that performing is her life’s passion), everyone she encounters is a refraction of her unformed sense of self. Proof that she’s not enough. And the ending, to me at least, was entirely clear: in real life, closure is hardly a given.