What It's Like in Words

September 2, 2024
Moss’s astute debut chronicles a London woman’s toxic relationship with an older man. Enola, 27, is a struggling writer working as a barista with her best friend, Ruth. She’s still processing her father’s death when she was a young girl and her decision to cut off communication with her mother. She meets the “mega-confident” B at a pub, where he props his feet up on the table next to her glass of wine. From then on, “the desire to please him bloomed like an addiction,” and he manipulates her with subtle insults and criticisms of her writing. Four months into the relationship and despite Ruth’s concerns, Enola takes a trip with B to Kenya, where she spent part of her childhood and where her father died. As memories of her dad resurface, Enola’s grief becomes too much for B and he breaks up with her, but it’s far from the end of their story. Over the next year and a half, Enola is constantly drawn back to B. Eventually, she must decide if she will move on from him and her troubled familial past or stay under his sway. While the novel’s structure is needlessly confusing, hopscotching across different periods of the relationship, Moss keenly portrays how Enola’s sense of self-worth becomes tied to B’s perception of her. It’s an arresting portrait of manipulation.

October 1, 2024
Dynamic debut portrays a dysfunctional, abusive relationship. Enola is an aspiring author in her late twenties, adrift in her life and in her writing. One day she meets a man in her writing group with whom she shares an instant physical connection. "His smile was suggestive but kind," Enola tells us. "I wanted to play with him. I wanted to look after him. I wanted to slap him. I wanted to fuck him." Soon, the two are involved, but at the expense of Enola's peace or pleasure. "The desire to please him bloomed like an addiction," she confesses, even though she can't decide whether she even enjoys their sex. Despite the facts that her best friend, Ruth, doesn't like him and that Enola's body seems to be trying to tell her something as she rapidly loses weight, she continues to pursue the relationship with abandon. Eventually, Enola and her boyfriend holiday in Kenya, where she grew up, and the trip triggers memories of her father, who died when she was young. As Enola struggles with her past, her boyfriend's constant criticisms never cease, and she must decide whether she can disentangle herself from a man who is less a peer or confidant than an addiction. The author deftly captures obsession, as well as the ways in which myriad small belittling comments can become the deepest of cuts. A searing novel about why we love people who are bad for us.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2024
Moss's first novel is an eminently relatable tale of a 28-year-old British woman whose life is turned upside down when she falls for the wrong man. Aspiring writer Enola meets this 35-year-old man, referred to only as B by one of his friends, when he attends her writers' group for a single meeting and makes it clear from his comments that he thinks he's above them. Nonetheless, on a bus ride home, Enola finds herself completely taken with him, and she quickly enters into a situationship with him in which it's apparent that her feelings greatly outweigh his. And yet, no matter how many times he puts her down or puts her off when she needs emotional support, Enola can't seem to let go of him, even as her lifelong best friend, Ruth, sees red flags everywhere with this guy. Readers might cringe at some of Enola's choices, but watching her grow as a writer is gratifying, while her youthful folly and all-consuming passion will resonate with and engender sympathy.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 8, 2024

Moss (who's really actor and singer Sarah Moss) debuts with a novel about love and toxic relationships. Aspiring writer Enola is almost 30 and longs for a serious relationship. She falls for an aloof writer and obsessively dreams of their future together, but as things unravel, she must rethink her perceptions, especially of herself. Prepub Alert.

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