Sparsely written, entertaining, and disturbing novel about sex, money, politics, and human relationships in the grand pattern of life. ( )

fantastic, the great emptiness flayed bare. ( )

Now that my brain has settled down a bit, I'm ready to review this novel for real. In some ways my relationship to the story has shifted a lot since I first read it, even though my admiration for it hasn't changed.

Reading Ultraluminous is like being thrown into a tornado of dissonance that resolves in a morally ambiguous and yet somehow completely satisfying way. I imagine it takes quite a lot out of a writer, to write so ruthlessly. It's a disturbing book, and it breaks so many taboos, and part of what i love about it is that it proves to me that words still retain the power to shock.

This is a book written for women, by a woman, and its conclusions are bleak. I feel happy for the men who can read it and enjoy it but in some ways this feels more than anything like a #me-too reflection, where the male-on-female abuse is dialed up to its last possible ear-splitting amplitude. Throughout the novel the reader is invited, by the narrative tone, to consider the protagonist an empowered woman, a sex industry worker at the top of her game, even as she is being demeaned and abused in every way possible. It's okay to her if her johns break a finger or blacks an eye because they pay her extra for it. She comes across as the one in control. Her bravura was seductive to me as a reader. I could easily fall into the notion of her as heroic. I could talk myself into thinking she is in charge of her own life, making big money and living the good life even as she is dehumanized in every possible way.

The violence and objectification that the protagonist experiences don't escalate from start to finish so I've been trying to puzzle through why it reads like a thriller. It could be because the protagonist is trapped in a repeating space where the most horrible objectifications become mind-numbing routine, and as a reader you know this level of nihilism can't go on forever; that this level of sexual violence eventually won't stick to a schedule and will begin to bleed out in unexpected ways. So you're just waiting for some wire to trip. For something to change the equilibrium. It's a hellish stasis, where the repetition of the protagonist's scheduled weekly meetings with men becomes a terribly tense read.

Even though the nihilism in the novel is relentless, and even though neither the protagonist nor the author ever gives any hints about what we readers are meant to think about any of it, the novel somehow left me feeling uplifted and hopeful. I'm still trying to work out why. In the meantime though I'm a fan of Katherine Faw, and i'm happy I read her brave relentless and very risky book. ( )

On finishing this I have a whole lot of questions that aren't quite fully formed yet, rather they're just unanswered bits of confusion that have different feelings attached to them.

Which I actually think is kind of representative of the book.

The style of very small vignettes collated into chapters leaves an odd feeling of structured disorientation while also kind of reminding me of those flashes of black and white crime scene images that sometimes flash across the screen of procedural crime dramas.

The mood trails between apathy, rage and anxiety(?)/ worry(?) with little snippets of fondness or delight or surprise - but those often feel like they're muted or just barely flickering and are extinguished quickly. It's very nihilistic - and very much not for the faint-hearted. ( )

Kaya, Katya, the unnamed one, has returned to her native NYC, escaping danger in Dubai, to practice scheduled, few-holds-barred sex for pay, with 4 HNWIs and 1 freebie former soldier. Also included are pay-for-pain, heroin on the side, no real truth, because "My thoughts belong to me."

I found the writing sharp, the situation interesting, the characters (nameless) less so. The actual sex I found innocuous, and the mysterious previous year in the Middle East threatening, yet unknowable. I wanted to follow the plot & be interested & entertained, yet I was unable to attain this goal despite repeated attempts at slow reading, fast reading, and re-reading. Any hints the author dropped as to action and motivation were too subtle, not picked up. The woman was snorting a lot of H, but her internal & external expressions rarely seemed affected, which struck me as odd. Great title, though.

Thanks to Edelweiss & FSG for the opportunity to preview this ARC. Wish I could have been more positive. ( )