This book was a great reminder that literary fiction can be crowd-pleasing. I really liked this book. The narrator was unique, the specificity of her voice was really incredible and pleasing. I loved this book. Thank you for the review copy!

An intriguing look at mental illness and how it impacts the life of a young woman. Amy works as a chambermaid and describes herself as a “Lady of the Trash.” This is prescient of her story where she destroys relationships that she so heart wrenchingly needs. She tries to use various psychological notions to change her life—most notably the placebo effect, creating a placebo for passing her EMT exam. This disappointing effort includes false certifications, uniforms and announcement to her family that she is an EMT. But just as the reader thinks she may succeed, she gets entangled in a relationship with her landlord and skips the real EMT exam. And thus the story proceeds. Spurred onward by the words of Florence Nightingale, we see her meandering and self-destructive path, moving forward in her life with recollections of her past.

The title tells the plot. At first she has nobody, then she has somebody (the landlord), and then she’ll take anybody (woman on the cruise ship). Searching for connection, I hope she finds somebody, anybody to care. I loved the interplay of psychology, EMT, Florence Nightingale and neurosis. A complicated look at one struggling soul. As Amy says, “still, not every obecalp can be successful, and not every prayer can be answered.” The story is one of desire, psychology and prayer unfulfilled.

I received an advanced reader copy (ARC) of Nobody, Somebody, Anybody from NetGalley. It it set to release in July. It was my one meh read for this month.

This novel is about an anxious young woman who administers a “placebo” treatment to herself in a last-ditch effort to rebuild her life. In the end she doesn’t move forward much at all and I’m not sure if she has learned or received the help she needs in order to move her life forward. I ended up not caring a whole lot about Amy or her “placebo” treatment as she continued to make terrible choices and spiral out of control.

This novel attempts to explore a young women’s inner world of grief, delusion and self-loathing but doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Amy Harney is desperately and profoundly lonely and lost.

Following a nervous breakdown after her mother's death, Amy leaves college, leaves her family, and begins working as a chambermaid (she prefers the connotation of chambermaid vs. housekeeper) where she spends her time cleaning up after wealthy guests. Not that she minds or that it's her end game. Amy wants to be an EMT. The problem is, no matter how hard she studies she just can't seem to pass the exam. To remedy her crippling exam anxiety, Amy decides to treat herself in a placebo-type program of her own making.

In truth, I'm still gathering my thoughts on this one so forgive me as I ramble about. Amy's deep sadness and loneliness and her desperate, slipping grip on her dreams and her life made my heart hurt for her. She seemed like someone who is always looking to something (her EMT dream) or someone (her landlord Gary) to fix her or make her whole. Like if she could just *get it* that she would finally really be living and be happy. Nobody, Somebody, Anybody is a wonderful, beautiful, nuanced character study, and even after finishing the book, I find myself thinking of Amy and wondering if she will ever be happy and okay.

If you read A Year of Rest and Relaxation and were among the reviewers who said that it was a book where not much happened, this won't be for you. At the heart of this novel is Amy, and her quest for nobody, somebody, anybody to see her.

This novel caught my eye because the narrator, Amy, seemed like broke Ottessa Moshfegh character. Strong start, I know.

Amy lives in Boston and works as a housekeeper for a yacht club while trying to pass the EMT exam. But after failing the final part of the test twice, she embarks on a self-administered placebo regimen to try and pass a final time.

Despite the straight forward premise, McClorey dives deep into the insidious power of anxiety and how it impacts our most basic need to connect. Amy is both relatable and utterly alien in her self-deception. The lengths to which she goes to try and manifest passing the exam are both creative and heartbreaking.

McClorey also nails the loneliness of being in a town without connections. With Amy’s father on the other side of the country, and her brother in the Peace Corps, she befriends various men as a solve to her loneliness. Each of them offer companionship, but no positive connection, while Amy vilifies the one woman who tries to help her. These relationships mirror Amy’s unresolved trauma; crystalizing her isolation despite her increasing need for help.

But, it’s the book’s romanic ending which actually gave me hope that Amy might still be all right. In the final pages she breaks her previous patterns, hoping for a new outcome. In the end, all she can do is try something new.

Reading this book was a bit like watching a car crash. Amy was a hot mess and there were many times that I struggled to get through this book, especially since I found it hard to find much to like about the main character. She had her occasional moments where she could come across charming and maybe even quirky, but that never seemed to match up with the character that we got to know, especially by delving so deep into her day to day thoughts.

I honestly found the people that she interacted with far more interesting and always looked forward to those moments, especially when she spent time with Gary. However, he ended up being pretty disappointing as well. The ending was also one that didn’t leave me feeling satisfied. I wish we could have gotten a bit more closure on her story and more of a resolution.

The description of this book also mentioned this book being “darkly comic” and “tender and laugh-out-loud funny” but I noticed very few of those things. I once laughed at a story her neighbor told but beyond that, it was more dark and depressing than anything else.

I felt the strength of the writing in each passing sentence but the momentum of the story eluded me. The narrator is consistently marvelous in her observations but the pacing didn’t work for me.

I found this book extremely smart and yet very bleak and hard to handle. I appreciated the main character’s humor, and yet it made me feel as though I was watching a car wreck in real time. The book is masterful and yet painful.

This may be a sign of the times, but I wasn't drawn in by Amy. The settings and characters were perfectly described, I could easily picture all of them as I read. But, something about her story just wasn't compelling.

A modern day Bell Jar. This book is heartbreakingly tender, and I found Amy’s experience to be extremely relatable. I loved this.

Hilarious, enthralling and befuddling - loved every minute of "Nobody, Somebody, Anybody". A read that is so bizarre and interesting I couldn't put it down and cannot wait to read it again.

Similar to two of my 2020 faves that I read - "My Year of Rest and Relaxation" and "Convenience store woman"


Thanks to Netgalley and Ecco for the early ebook!

There have been a lot of books about unconventional or women with mental illnesses in the last decade that I have enjoyed, like Where’d You Go Bernadette. This book tries to follow in a similar genre with our protagonist Amy. Unfortunately, I felt that we were left in the dark for too long about what happened to Amy, and I did not feel as if she had any redemption arc or quest for self improvement that made me want to root for her. Her continually disturbing choices were quite tragic but did not endear her to me as it wasn’t until the last three pages that it seemed like she had any desire to improve her life and even that was out of her control.

Interesting debut novel about Amy Hanley desires to be an EMT but always has difficulty with taking exams despite being a well-read person. As a result, she decided to perform a placebo method on herself, making her and everyone believe she had passed the exam and now is a certified EMT though still working as a chambermaid in the summer, a job offered by her landlord. They eventually got to know each other, with him often asking her opinion on his cooking and relationship advice and things start go downhill from then. Amy's personality is definitely not lovable. She constantly wants to feel needed by everyone to the point that is a bit intrusive and often deludes herself into thinking that everything will be in her favor, that everyone will be forever grateful toward her if she centers her decision on that person she wants to be close to. Of course, things do not work that way but it is understandable if you know her relationship with her mother although some questionable actions of her still make me uncomfortable, not to mention her anger management is also one of the reason that lead to her downfall,
Overall, this is a great read with powerful message. I would definitely recommend it!

Thanks to Netgalley and Ecco for the early ebook. Amy Harney is a young woman obsessed with Florence Nightingale and sees her life as one for serving others. She’s a chambermaid for the summer, but will soon take an exam to become an EMT. After this sunny start, we find out that life is not as glorious as Amy makes it out to be. She constantly imagines that the rich clients, and her coworkers, are underestimating her, as she’s gone to an elite university herself. But soon we find out that she didn’t graduate from college and that Amy has no friends and sees unfairness and conspiracies against her from everyone she meets. Amy has never properly dealt with the recent death of her mother and this darkly comic novel makes you laugh out loud or hold your breath as Amy crashes into the various people she meets trying to define who she really wants to be. It’s a solid first novel.