ACTS OF SERVICE

“Extraordinary . . .  a work of ferocious moral and sensual intelligence and a masterly defense of sex for its own sake.” —Becca Rothfeld, THE GUARDIAN

“Acts of Service is a stylish, elegant piece of provocation that is also as sincere and searching as its heroine. Even if it pisses you off, it’s hard not to keep turning the pages. It’s a bold, promising debut.” —Mary Gaitskill, author of This Is Pleasure

“Searching and enthralling . . . [Acts of Service] arrives with quiet confidence and a fully formed bank of ideas about intimacy, sexual ethics and contemporary mores.” —Joanna Thomas-Corr, THE NEW STATESMAN

“This fascinating novel, which will be read as a defense of libertinism, paradoxically turns out to be a book of exquisite moral refinement and almost intimidating elegance.” —Edmund White, author of A Boy’s Own Story and States of Desire

“An uncommonly smart, painful, and elegant novel about the ethics of sex and sexuality. I will be thinking about it for a long time.” —Merve Emre

“Taut, thorny, and sublimely fraught… This book is electric.” —Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun

“Alluring, smooth, and smart.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

“A new kind of queer novel… razor-sharp hedonism, and Fishman’s characters lean into the granular pleasures of sex at the expense of a moral compass.” —THE CUT

“Had me hooked from the first sentence… Lillian Fishman has written one of the most entertaining books about sex I’ve ever read.” —BUZZFEED

“Months after turning the final page, I’m still thinking about this fiercely wily novel.” —Heidi Julavits, author of The Folded Clock

“Seamlessly written, sedate and subtle and so pleasurable, and quite enrapturing on a psychological level. . . This book opens space for a new kind of precision and intelligence that gives the amoral opulence of desire its rightful place.” —Niamh Campbell, author of This Happy and We Were Young

“This book asks us to consider what it might mean to truly honor our own desires, however messy they might be. I loved it.” —Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass

“Disturbing, erotic, completely compulsive; quickeningly captivating, provocative in ways that I am still turning over.” —Lucy Caldwell, author of These Days

“Acts of Service doesn’t shy away from asking big questions about the nature of attraction. All this, but with a great deal of page-turning pleasure.” —Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends and Super Sad Love Love Story

“I was completely absorbed by this radical, daring, and bracing novel about a so-cold and yet so-intimate world where safety and pleasure can only be found in the most unlikely and unpredictable of places. It is a book of exciting, provocative complexity, and, for me, it made the human creature feel like something new.” —Sheila Heti, author of How Should a Person Be? and Pure Colour

“One of Fishman’s keenest insights in Acts of Service is how context-dependent our understanding of normative sex is… It wouldn’t be unfair to read Acts of Service as a test case for the idea, advanced by Chu and others, that to corral desire within predetermined ideological parameters is to smother it—and to no real end.” —Jess Bergman, THE POINT

“A radical understanding of the multi-hyphenate definitions of sexual orientation . . . Using sex as a road map, Eve is searching to understand her own inner workings as a young woman. We tend to love what disturbs us, if we are willing to follow our desires and take the risk.” —INTERVIEW

“Bold and unflinchingly sexy.” —VOGUE

“Acts of Service doesn’t kiss you first; it gets right to it—depicting the liquid frequencies of need and power with a thoughtful, savage eye.” —Raven Leilani, author of Luster

“I cannot recall the last time I felt this exhilarated and transformed by a novel. Acts of Service electrified both my mind and body. How can a story feel so smart and carnal at once?” —Sanaë Lemoine, author of The Margot Affair

“Reminiscent of Sally Rooney’s work . . . An evocative exploration of desire and sexuality, this dark debut will cause readers to question the very nature of consent.” —KIRKUS REVIEWS

“Stunning… I didn’t want it to end.” —Saskia Vogel, author of Permission

“Smart in its triangulations and tensions, and on the question of how a certain set of politically minded young people are supposed to live now.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“A kind of supercharged combo of Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh, and as smart as Joan Didion, Lillian Fishman is not just a brilliant writer—she’s a brilliant feeler, a great thinker. She has the gift we open books for.” —David Lipsky, author of The Art Fair

“Reading Acts of Service I felt the uncanny sensation of being in the presence of its narrator, observing me as I tore through its pages. Fishman’s Eve heir to Eve Babitz, makes us complicit in her interrogation of desire with an erotic, cerebral, subversive and tormenting tale, a reckoning formed in the cracks between certainties, like the cooling magma that rises between tectonic plates; between voyeurism and complicity, intimacy and alienation, the body and the mind.” —Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy and Asylum Road