Self Care

This strained outing from Canadian critic and novelist Smith (Girl Crazy) portrays a 20-something woman’s unhappy dating life. Gloria is trying to survive in the Toronto suburbs as a freelance writer. She is experienced sexually, but unsatisfied with the guys she’s seeing, not least because her antidepressants make her unable to have an orgasm. Then, a chance encounter with a younger guy named Daryn (“a boy who wanted her terribly and hated her terribly”) upends her life. After discovering that he belongs to an incel group, she decides to interview him for a magazine article about online toxic masculinity. Soon, their ostensibly professional meetings give way to a twisted sexual relationship in which she manipulates Daryn and inflicts emotional damage to the point that he threatens suicide. Mental health issues and self-harm suffuse the narrative—Gloria’s two roommates, both women, each attempt suicide—but it’s not clear what Smith wants to say on the theme. He writes cleanly and keeps the plot moving, and while he convincingly describes the self-absorbed men in Gloria’s life—one of them says he’s “frustrated” with her because he can’t make her come—his portrait of Gloria never feels authentic, and the story’s tragic outcome lacks weight. It’s a miss. (Oct.)