Give Me Everything You've Got, Imogen Crimp's sophomore outing, is a sweltering, claustrophobic novel with a highly cerebral foundation. To get it out of the way: no, this book does not use quotation marks. That has never bothered me (and it never will!!!), and I think it was an intelligent choice here. Our protagonist and POV character Ruby, who tells us this story in first-person, is a complicated, fawning people pleaser and director actively working on a script that's meant to tell a "female" story. This question of what is or is not a female and/or feminist story persists throughout the novel.

The crux of this story is that Ruby spends two weeks in residence at the countryside estate of her workshop director, Ellen, alongside Ellen and her 20-year-old daughter Lara. Ruby gets caught in and between their orbits, and their sometimes-opposite influences and impulses feel like spiderweb silk with Ruby trapped and wriggling in the middle. There's a surrealist edge to the story that makes it clear why this has been referred to in reviews as a modern gothic tale. The house itself has a presence that's at turns ominous and welcoming, and some scenes (Ruby trying to leave down the driveway and realizing the gate will only open for a car) drive home the strangeness of this time for Ruby, which sits at a stark remove from the London life she left for this opportunity.

There was a lot about this that worked for me. I think Crimp is excellent — dare I say unmatched? — when it comes to writing about women who are desperate for approval. That's such a through-line between her first book and this one, and I appreciated that the theme itself continued to be explored in depth but that the books didn't feel like they were treading the same ground. I loved Lara's character and her mercurial moods, her unpredictability, how utterly 20-years-old she is. I also really appreciated the ending, which wasn't particularly bombastic but did feel like a classic way to end a gothic tale.

Extremely comforting, philosophical, and sweet. Panders to book lovers, almost to the point of melodrama, but I do so love to be pandered to. Found myself rooting for each character and enjoying the way their stories wrapped up.

Fully understand why this didn’t work for a lot of people—it feels long for what it is at over 300 pages and took me half the month to finish—but this one did end up working for me! 24yo Anna, singer at a conservatory in London, meets older and wealthier Max and falls headfirst into a claustrophobic relationship with him. What I appreciate about Crimp’s approach was how insidious so many things about their relationship felt without ever defaulting to absolutes. As I said while reading: I felt horrible the majority of the time, and yet couldn’t quite put it down. Compelling, exhausting, sometimes confusing and infuriating, and sharp as hell. (If a book without quotation marks bothers you, this one won’t be a fit. But I couldn’t care less and thought it worked well here and was well done!)