Disappoint Me, Nicola Dinan
After the roaring success of her debut, Bellies, Nicola Dinan has produced another soon to be literary classic. Disappoint Me asks us how someone’s past decisions and relationships affect their current ones, exploring how those past and present situations can collide quite spectacularly. When Max meets Vincent, everything seems to be going well, but little does she know, Vincent can’t shake his past. And when the truth comes to light, will Max be able to?
Dinan’s writing entirely absolves the reader into the story; your surroundings blur and dissolve until you become completely absorbed and part of the book. Reading her work gives the feeling of addiction and, even though literary novels will never grip in the way that a thriller does, this book certainly is addictive.
The characters are fascinating. It’s often easy to categorise characters of any genre into good, bad or morally grey, but yet again Dinan has created very real people; they blur those lines and make us question their true identities and motives. The result is the kind of writing you’ll be talking about for weeks after you’ve finished reading.
What Dinan has always done spectacularly is focus her stories on and around the trans experience, allowing these characters to be so much more than just their trans identity and never just another story of trauma. That’s not to say trauma doesn’t feature, nor that her work is censored for a certain audience, but that her characters have deep and rich lives beyond that label.
Nicola Dinan will be studied in years to come as one of the modern greats and I strongly recommend reading both Disappoint Me and Bellies. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.
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