i'm sorry michael imperioli i know you love this book but i can't do it. i can feel how hard it's trying to be cool and it's making me feel like my skin is turning inside out.

A zippy story about the daughter of two disaffected rock stars, making terrible romantic decisions and a second act reveal that propelled the plot forward. Nothing groundbreaking but a solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book is incredible, and I found the story to be entirely relatable. I felt as though it was written for ME.

Big thank you to Netgalley & Verso Fiction for a copy of this novel!

A coming of age story truly unlike any other. Margot is the disenchanted child of two ambitious artists, who possesses an oddity that becomes increasingly hard to ignore as she grows up: her inability to feel pain. This novel is a haunting and at times shocking exploration of nepotism, cinema, burnout, sexuality, and how our relationships with our bodies can define our relationships with others. The sensory detail LaCava provides truly transported me, and her witty, engaging prose kept me turning page after page. In the interest of avoiding spoilers, I'll leave out plot specifics, but I was absolutely STUNNED by the climax and ending. This story ends as abruptly as it begins. It leaves you reeling, grappling, and wanting (in a good way), which mirrors the way that Margot appears to feel throughout her adolescence. Also, Margot's character is a marvel, and an absolute joy to read. She is complex, brooding, and lonely. A sparking ball of potential fizzling out from lack of direction. We get to witness her navigate female friendship, intimacy, and her estrangement from her jet-setting parents, from her body, and from her very sense of self. The micro-managed, silver-spoon lifestyle she was brought up in awarded Margot plenty of (often unearned) opportunity, but left her emotionally neglected and lacking in ambition. When she decides to completely detach from this life without entirely abandoning he habituation to luxury, she stays in the empty, secluded home belonging to the family of a friend. In this dusty little town, she meets a man who claims to be a doctor, but offers little else about himself. As her pseudo-romantic relationship progresses with him (primarily through their shared interests in film and Margot's condition), the complexities of Margot's body and her capacities for physical and emotional love are slowly unraveled. One thing this novel does masterfully is SHOWING and NOT TELLING! LaCava allows us to understand Margot and the characters around her through their actions and interactions rather than inundating the reader with rushed context or statements of fact. It makes for an intoxicating, emotionally-driven experience that I still find myself thinking about from time to time. As someone recovering from a down-swing in chronic illness, I've felt the distance between body and mind that is displayed in this book. While Margot's condition is certainly unique, the delicacy and visceral LaCava employs makes for a unique but relatable discourse in the human relationship to one's body.

This should've been my jam. It was not. How could this book be so bad when the description and cover are so good? I would not recommend this book.
Thank you Netgalley for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

I'm not sure how to best describe this book. A lot started to happen toward the middle/end of the book, so it didn't really hook me until a got a bit through it. I found the ending really interesting, but the first part of the book jumped back and forth in time without a whole lot happening, which I had a bit of trouble getting into it.

The title, cover and blurb all really appealed to me, but I struggled to get properly engrossed in this. It just wasn't for me.

i'd give this a solid 3.5 though i will say i was surprised at the avg goodreads rating! i figured more people would be into this one.

i thought the premise was v intriguing and i actually liked the prose and the way the story unraveled - it took me a sec or two to get into tho. i even liked margot, the protagonist, and felt empathy towards her, wanted to hug her n tell her she'd be ok. some parts did move more slow than i would've liked and the bulk of it felt focused on the past vs the present story at hand when the present story at hand felt a lot more riveting. but even still, i enjoyed it overall.

'that was the important part about saying nothing. you could come back and fill in the gaps left unsaid. there was no commitment to an ending, no irate commentary logged. so very him. only emptiness as evidence, a void with every version of the worst.'

I had mixed thoughts on this novel, as documented in this wrap up on my YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/bkjk0S0ht_M

I Fear my Pain interests you was a "sad girl" novel, with glimpses into Margot's glittery life in Manhattan and her move to Montana. It was enjoyable but lots of pain throughout.

Understanding Margot, the narrator of Stephanie LaCava’s I Fear My Pain Interests You, means understanding that she feels no pain, a trait laid bare in the title itself. But much of the first half of the novel, deliciously so, focuses on Margot’s world or rather the world she was born into - a world of gilded grandmothers who try to control your every move and a world of deep cultural lineage. Margot is the child of famous and interesting people, who we don’t learn much more about besides the fact they are famous and interesting. LaCava has a terrific grasp on the power and pressure of being those things, and the confines and the pains of being having to embrace them. Her prose flows as Margot floats around Manhattan, hiding from expectations in an inherited brownstone apartment.

It isn’t until Margot disappears from her world and finds herself in Montana that the novel becomes more than a rumination on familiar sad girl tropes and becomes something truly exciting and unexpected, moving at such a pace while exploring its central premise that it’s over before you’ve even had time to savor it.

In an interview with Lillian Fishman (author of Acts of Service), LaCava describes this book as an exorcism, that it saved her life.

In most cases, an exorcism is a shared experienced. Look at Emily Rose, look at Regan. There are other people in the room. Other histories, other ongoings. Us, as readers, too.

Finished this right before Andrew Dominik's Blonde , and I couldn't have asked for a better pairing.

What does it mean to feel pain? What leads up to it? How is it felt? What happens in the in between moments? After the blood, before the healing, in all the ways a wound reminds you that it is there through aches, living rent-free in undivided attention.

In all the ways we've watched and seen Monroe through technicolor or black and white photos, no pain was present. It wasn't until Dominik's adaptation of Oates' book do we explore the realms of how she really felt, even though, still, no matter how hard we try and try with our limitless imaginations, we will never know. Never.

Fishman said it best: "The space of a novel asks how does a person really feel as opposed to how they should feel?"

And so, strangely enough, we side by Graves, trying to understand why a girl can't feel pain, exorcising our own curiosity and pursuited interests in trying to understand a small formed thing that is a woman through the eyes of a man we don't even know or trust

Thanks to NetGalley and Verso Books for the advanced reader copy.

This week’s headline? I fear this review might not interest you

Why this book? “A punky, raw novel of millenial disaffection, trauma and 1960s cinema”

Which book format? ARC

Primary reading environment? All over

Any preconceived notions? I will most likely love this book

Identify most with? Lucy

Three little words? “a pirouette pose”

Goes well with? Cross country flights, dysfunctional relationships

Recommend this to? People trying to make positive changes

Other cultural accompaniments: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/24/books/review/stephanie-lacava-i-fear-my-pain-interests-you.html

Grade: 3.75/5

I leave you with this: “What’s the cat’s name?”
“Miles Davis.”
“Cool.”

📚📚📚

It seems a good chunk of people aren’t into this one. I’ve seen so many two star ratings. Guess there’s been quite the number of sad girl novels as of late and readers are done. As for me, I haven’t been keeping up with every book about sad women in their 20s as I am no longer in my 20s and my book choices have been all over the place this year. Part of me wonders if the wrong target audience is reading these books and that’s why readers are feeling let down. People might come at me for being judgmental, but be honest. If you go into a book knowing it’s not for you then why waste your time and shit all over it?

As for I Fear My Pain Interests You, I liked it quite a bit. It’s short, but not lacking in substance. There is a lot of pain here even if it’s not felt by Margot, who is the main character. She’s an actress who just got out of an abusive relationship and goes to stay in a friend’s parents’ place in Montana. She meets a doctor in a cemetery who she gifts the nickname, Graves, and he studies her inability to feel pain.

I think this warrants a reread from me and I’ll probably bump up the rating. Actually, I may end up buying this one. Definitely recommend.

I Fear My Pain Interests You will be released on October 25, 2022.

tw: abuse

This book is confusing., and not in a good way. The main character Margot is a "victim" who searches out her own victim hood. She is entitled and annoying. Or maybe she's mentally ill. Either way I never cared about her. This is no romance, but like all good heroine's she has one friend. The book is either the ramblings from inside her head, or an unedited first draft. I only refrained from DNFing it because it was so short. When i got to the "end" I wondered if i had somehow only downloaded the first half, the end is that abrupt. The description on the back does not match the book I read at all, particularly the phrase "audaciously sexy" unless you think desperate, lonely, damaged people sticking it in each other is sexy. I don't know what made me request this book from NetGalley, but the only thing that made me read past 20 percent was so I could leave an honest and complete review.

Touted as the “cool girl book of the year,” I Fear My Pain Interests You asks the impossible question, "Can you cause pain to someone who feels none?" through the gaslighting and violent undoing of Margot Highsmith, the daughter of two famously tragic punk musicians and self-aware "nepotism baby" who was born with CIPA, a disorder that makes her unable to feel pain.

Imagistic and lyrical, the novel luxuriates in the beauty and horror of strange objects and abandoned spaces. Margot, an aspiring actress, conflates film scenarios and reality in a way that calls back to Kate Zambreno's Green Girl. She makes questionable yet seemingly inevitable decisions like the jilted protagonist of Iris Owens's After Claude. She jettisons explanation and immerses the reader in her disorientation in the style of Renee Gladman's Event Factory.

Although LaCava's depictions of numb violence and the objectifying medical gaze struck me as somewhat contrived, the novel succeeds in eviscerating the tame and tidy healing narrative by which female protagonists in toxic relationships are often circumscribed. In lieu of healing, the novel offers a lesson in the art of cruelty by way of its spectacle of coolness.

A very polarising read, with some parts that I quite enjoyed, some parts that felt quite slow and dull and some parts where I really didn't know how I felt about the book. The second part felt more fast paced and we were able to see more of the main character, Margot's personality and this somewhat complex character development was perhaps the strongest point of the novel for me.
However, whilst I understand what the author was going for, Lacava's prose wasn't quite strong enough to deliver on the vision. Sometimes the descriptions were so confusing that I had to read them a few times to understand what was happening. For me, the prose at times almost felt like an over the top high school drama piece or poem, with a lot of commas and lists with no purpose, and an underwhelming ending.
Thanks NetGalley for the eARC

Margot, the daughter of famous parents, is an aspiring actress who can’t feel pain. Failing in her career and falling short in her parents’ footsteps, Margot leaves home for a small village and engages in a ill advised relationship with an older man.

It’s the era of books about beautiful, young, emotionally distraught women purposely putting themselves in damaging positions with men who treat them badly. For me, this is the book in that category I’ve found hardest to follow. There were some really great moments here, but I could not connect to the characters or relationships, nor could I find a piece of interest to keep me excited as I read. I would definitely read form this author again, but this isn’t the book for me.

LaCava has embodied the sad girl trope and gave us this undelightful, restless, nepo baby and gave her life. Margot Highsmith has the world at her fingertips but constantly falls in and out of bed with the wrong men and getting herself hurt physically and emotionally. Highsmith’s pain stems from the lack of emotional connect where most people keeps her at arms lengths.

This novel is poetic and fun and a reminder that everyone needs love. I will be preordering this asap because I need a physical copy.

The second half of Lacava's novel is definitely the highlight of "I Fear My Pain Interests You"; well-written, with impressive imagery construction and cultural references that were right up my alley.

Coming of the recent trend of the "sad girl novel," Stephanie Lacava's newest novel I Fear My Pain Interests You could not be published at a better time. The book focuses on Margot, a spunky nepotism baby who is failing in her career as an actress. She fits the textbook trope of the "unhinged girl," but lacks any charisma that makes other characters in novels like this so interesting.

For a title as enticing as "I Fear My Pain Interests You," Lacava's writing doesn't hold up either. Instead of the flowing prose that was seemingly promised, the novel instead invites you to read a story that doesn't seem to truly have a voice. Instead, Lacava offers up a mildly intriguing character with Margot, but one that isn't as intriguing as the "messy" female characters who came before her.

While the awareness of her privilege does make Margot a tad more sympathetic, she's just not interesting. That is, until she gets diagnosed with a mysterious illness, made known to her by a mysterious man she meets in a graveyard. This is just the final act of the novel, but the story would have benefited from this being the plotline that guides Margot's story.

Unrefreshing and abysmal comes Stephanie Lacava's newest novel. Perhaps the "sad girl," trope is tiring myself and others out, or perhaps this novel just isn't very good. As much as I wanted to love it, and as much as I strived to find some sense of purpose in "I Fear My Pain Interests You," I ultimately found none.