Anhedonia

I downloaded a copy of Anhedonia by Nico Reznick when I noticed it mentioned on Twitter in a #TuesdayBookBlog promotion. That was last year and I am kicking myself for not getting around to reading it sooner. I loved every minute of Anhedonia!

Reznick has created a wonderfully flawed and vulnerable lead character in Alex. Unable to experience any form of emotion, his only release is to tap into the intense grief of recently bereaved women, inventing temporary personas in order to trick them into sleeping with him. That sentence makes Alex sound like a hateful person, but don't let his actions put you off this novel because he is far more complex than a single compulsion. Instead add in a best friend that he doesn't really like, a family with whom he struggles to communicate, a job he despises, and an amazingly darkly portrayed Cotswolds setting that never once comes close to its famed chocolate box idyll.

Narrating his own story, Alex occasionally slips away from What Happened Back Then to give us a glimpse of himself as the author of his tale. I thought this an excellent device, especially for observations such as the potential heartbreak of apostrophe placement. Reznick has a poet's eye for both detail and language so her scenes are alive with unexpected observation. Even mundane settings become interesting and the bizarre dream sequences are great fun. I enjoyed the nods to influences such as Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk and the narrative style sometimes led me to wonder if Alex was named for A Clockwork Orange.

A fascinating storyline peopled with thoroughly believable characters, set on the darker side of life and with plenty of just my kind of black humour made this a perfect book for me. I have already downloaded Reznick's first volume of poetry and fervently hope that she will write another novel too.