This article discusses key plot points and the emotional arc of Acts of Desperation.

In contemporary publishing, female characters are often portrayed as hyper-independent: self-possessed, boundary-savvy, and well-contained. Emotional unavailability, especially in men, is still packaged as independence, mystery, even depth. Meanwhile, real-world romance is dominated by swipe culture, avoidance, and chronic ambiguity. “Keeping it casual” is a default stance, and ghosting is treated as a communication style.

Meg Nolan’s novel Acts of Desperation offers an unflinching portrait of attachment wounds, longing, and self-betrayal, without rescue fantasies and without a tidy resolution. Rather than rewarding detachment or staging a triumphant empowerment arc, the novel stays with what is uncomfortable, repetitive, and unresolved.

I had a rich and insightful conversation with Nolan about toxic relationships in literature, the shame surrounding attachment trauma, and why awareness can be the beginning of repair.

A central force in Acts of Desperation is the private chaos of early adulthood itself. The narrator is in her early-to-mid twenties, a period Nolan describes as “such a performative era,” a stage of life when there is so much uncertainty and so much pressure to fake confidence, even while feeling lost and confused.

As a young woman, “you don’t want to appear pitiable or constantly vulnerable.” But the cost of that performance is isolation and compromised identity.

Nolan says, “even among close friends, confusion and loneliness are kept private. Writing the book felt like an attempt to expose that isolation, to make it undeniable, because it’s so common and so rarely admitted.”

Rather than writing toward an aspirational reader, Nolan was interested in the encounter itself. The moment when someone sees their private disorientation reflected back to them without being softened or redeemed. “Your........

© Psychology Today