Description

‘A truly original literary mystery… A humane work that really seeks to understand… Like the best really serious novels, it’s profoundly uncomfortable, avoids easy dramatic answers and forces you to really think and question – yourself as much as its own narrative’
Luke Kennard, author of The Transition

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S was a good person. Such a good person. They all told me that – so it had to be true.

S is unique. It seems that most people think so – his mother, his sister, his best friend, but relative strangers too. In fact, they and others all have much to say in the inquiry into S. When prompted, when the tape recorder in front of them clicks, a succession of family, friends and professional contacts in turn describe his shapeshifting charisma. All struggle to account for the enigmatic figure who has wandered through their lives, doing some good things – and some bad. Yet as they talk, it becomes apparent that they are not so much telling his story, as they are their own – of their common need for love, touch, retribution, closure. Together, their tissue of voices reveal the complexity of care.

In a series of intimate snapshots charting the relations of one ordinary yet extraordinary man, Clinical Intimacy explores the emotional conditions and moral consequences of a life lived in service of satisfying others.

Publisher Review

Clinical Intimacy is a fascinating exercise in understanding a life through the shadows it casts in other people’s lives. It asks us whether great kindness can be a pathology, or if it is just pathologized by people to whom it is alien. Beautifully conceived and written, psychologically and politically acute, this is a debut of great breadth and power. * Sandra Newman, author of Julia * A truly original literary mystery, and a bold meditation on care, judgement and exploitation. Clinical Intimacy drew me in immediately then had me reading more urgently as its formally innovative story deepened. You gradually piece things together, never completely certain, and aware of yourself as another voice, another consciousness with its own preconceptions, in the cast of characters. Among many other qualities, Gass is able to puncture the bromides and platitudes of contemporary life – the ways some of these were thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic, and the ways in which we persist in them obliviously still. Despite this sharpness and discernment it’s a humane work that really seeks to understand. One of the human and social qualities it really wrestles with is charm, or even compassion and its multiple distortions. Like the best really serious novels, it’s profoundly uncomfortable, avoids easy dramatic answers and forces you to really think and question – yourself as much as its own narrative. An unmissable debut. * Luke Kennard, author of Notes on the Sonnets * Arresting in its originality, Clinical Intimacy impels you through its pages in sheer curiosity as to what it will do next. Ewan Gass has achieved what all novelists ought to attempt: he has forged a whole new way of telling a story. * Rob Doyle, author of Autobibliography and Threshold * Intimate, intricate, emotional and gripping – like an analytic Cubist portrait of a mysterious and charismatic figure, S, who we get to know through fractured glimpses – Clinical Intimacy is one of the best first novels I’ve read in a long while. * Toby Litt, author of Patience * Voices – craving, guilty, disgusted, devoted – spin around a haunting question that we run after with every page. Through this sequence of testimonies, Gass has shown himself a master of delicate, gutting tragedy. An utterly intoxicating novel of human contradictions and secrecy that stays under the skin long after the last words. * Yelena Moskovich, author of Virtuoso *