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Ask Me Again
A Finalist for The Center For Fiction First Novel Prize
‘Beautiful . . . Clare Sestanovich is a writer of disarming radiance’ – Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness
How much knowledge do you need in order to know someone?
As her grandmother is dying, sixteen-year-old Eva wanders the halls of a hospital. There, she spots Jamie. Despite having little in common, from this chance-encounter stems a life-changing platonic love.
She is sixteen, living in middle-class Brooklyn; he is the same age, but from the super-rich of Upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he’s bold, mysterious, eccentric. Eva’s family is warm and welcoming, but Jamie avoids going home to his.
As Eva goes off to university and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out and is drawn towards radical experiments in politics and religion. Their separate spheres seem to be spiralling away from each other, but it soon becomes clear that they are both circling the same question: how do you define yourself and your beliefs in a divided and unjust world?
Written with precision and immense wit, Ask Me Again is a journey of intimacy across time. A love story of sorts, this coming-of-age novel explores how relationships can define us, change us and point us towards futures we might not have imagined for ourselves.
‘A deeply philosophical novel, which surprises and delights at every turn’ – Jenny Offill, author of Weather
‘Beautiful . . . Clare Sestanovich is a writer of disarming radiance’ – Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness
How much knowledge do you need in order to know someone?
As her grandmother is dying, sixteen-year-old Eva wanders the halls of a hospital. There, she spots Jamie. Despite having little in common, from this chance-encounter stems a life-changing platonic love.
She is sixteen, living in middle-class Brooklyn; he is the same age, but from the super-rich of Upper Manhattan. She’s observant, cautious, eager to seem normal; he’s bold, mysterious, eccentric. Eva’s family is warm and welcoming, but Jamie avoids going home to his.
As Eva goes off to university and falls in and out of love, Jamie drops out and is drawn towards radical experiments in politics and religion. Their separate spheres seem to be spiralling away from each other, but it soon becomes clear that they are both circling the same question: how do you define yourself and your beliefs in a divided and unjust world?
Written with precision and immense wit, Ask Me Again is a journey of intimacy across time. A love story of sorts, this coming-of-age novel explores how relationships can define us, change us and point us towards futures we might not have imagined for ourselves.
‘A deeply philosophical novel, which surprises and delights at every turn’ – Jenny Offill, author of Weather
320 pages, Paperback
Published January 23, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 154 reviews
June 26, 2024
I need to stop doing this -- forcing myself to finish books because I'm sure they'll get better, because some supposedly important voice has deemed it worthy. I connected to none of the characters. The decade-spanning connection between the two apparent best friends was barely forged in the beginning, so I never bought it. And just so painfully slow. Sigh.
dnfed
July 24, 2024DNF at 64%. Theres a lot of beautiful lines but other than that it feels like a nothing burger of a story and I couldn't make myself read anymore of it.
No rating because I don't rate DNFs.
No rating because I don't rate DNFs.
December 31, 2024
this book started strong but then just... lost the plot, leaving me wondering if i was even reading the same story by the end. still, i couldn't help but love the pacing and those gorgeous quotes.
huge thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy—i really appreciate it! <3
huge thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy—i really appreciate it! <3
Read
April 17, 2025Buone le prime 80 pagine circa, poi parte una serie di cose nonsense intramezzate da dialoghi nonsense. Boh.
August 1, 2024
Ask Me Again is a gorgeously written account of asking for more from life. More is not a cliched stand-in for typical aspirations like financial/career success, world travel, or even passionate romances. Here, ‘more’ represents a quieter desire to remain porous enough to receive life. It’s reckoning the rawness of adolescence – a time when you wanted to feel the rattle of life’s extremes in your bones – with the slow shedding of that openness as life transitions into a series of mundane tasks.
At 16, Eva exists on the sidelines of her life. She notices everything but does not always know what to make of it. When she meets Jamie (also 16), she is instantly enamored with his strong convictions and philosophical worldview. They are opposites in many ways – she is the child of artists in middle-class Brooklyn while he is the neglected son of extreme wealth on the Upper East Side. Their connection is not romantic or sexual. To call it friendship feels somehow both more and less than what it is, which is more like blood or (in the words of T. Swift) an invisible string tying them together.
Their lives go in different directions after high school, as Eva takes the sensible linear steps: going to college, moving to a new city, and getting an entry-level job at a prestigious company in the field she’s interested in. Jamie denounces his wealth, moves in with Eva’s parents, and follows his feelings to extremes, which rarely land him in positive situations. While I cared about Jamie, this book is very much about Eva, and every experience is another opportunity to explore her perspective.
Her voice is like a toothache as she marches through life in step with (as opposed to against) the subtle throbbing of pain. This book took me places I wasn’t expecting, like explorations of the shady underworlds of young politicians and new-age organized religious groups, but it was so gorgeously written I would have followed Eva anywhere!
At 16, Eva exists on the sidelines of her life. She notices everything but does not always know what to make of it. When she meets Jamie (also 16), she is instantly enamored with his strong convictions and philosophical worldview. They are opposites in many ways – she is the child of artists in middle-class Brooklyn while he is the neglected son of extreme wealth on the Upper East Side. Their connection is not romantic or sexual. To call it friendship feels somehow both more and less than what it is, which is more like blood or (in the words of T. Swift) an invisible string tying them together.
Their lives go in different directions after high school, as Eva takes the sensible linear steps: going to college, moving to a new city, and getting an entry-level job at a prestigious company in the field she’s interested in. Jamie denounces his wealth, moves in with Eva’s parents, and follows his feelings to extremes, which rarely land him in positive situations. While I cared about Jamie, this book is very much about Eva, and every experience is another opportunity to explore her perspective.
Her voice is like a toothache as she marches through life in step with (as opposed to against) the subtle throbbing of pain. This book took me places I wasn’t expecting, like explorations of the shady underworlds of young politicians and new-age organized religious groups, but it was so gorgeously written I would have followed Eva anywhere!
November 25, 2024
thank you to the publishers for my review copy, i am very grateful!
unfortunately i didnt gel with this book at all. i found it really slow and uneventful, the characters flat and i struggled to actually understand what the storyline was and what the book was trying to achieve. there is potential, but the execution just wasn’t the best.
unfortunately i didnt gel with this book at all. i found it really slow and uneventful, the characters flat and i struggled to actually understand what the storyline was and what the book was trying to achieve. there is potential, but the execution just wasn’t the best.
July 21, 2024
I had really high hopes for this because of Sestanovich’s story collection, my main critic of it being that she didn’t dive as deeply into the characters as I thought she should have, assuming that a novel would give her the room she needed to develop her characters.
And yet…here we are.
The sentences were clear and picturesque in parts, but whatever joy can be found in the syntax is overshadowed by the shallowness of the characters. It makes me a little apathetic towards everything else, you know.
Some great questions are asked in these pages, yet I never get the sense that the main character ever really grapples with them, opting instead to shrug and never think about them again—the book never suggesting that this behavior contributes to anything.
But! I enjoyed the scope. I think Sestanovich shoots for the sky and, though she misses, demonstrates what she is capable of doing. I hope the next book, the daunting future book, can have both Sestanovich’s elegant prose and a cast of characters who breathe on the page.
And yet…here we are.
The sentences were clear and picturesque in parts, but whatever joy can be found in the syntax is overshadowed by the shallowness of the characters. It makes me a little apathetic towards everything else, you know.
Some great questions are asked in these pages, yet I never get the sense that the main character ever really grapples with them, opting instead to shrug and never think about them again—the book never suggesting that this behavior contributes to anything.
But! I enjoyed the scope. I think Sestanovich shoots for the sky and, though she misses, demonstrates what she is capable of doing. I hope the next book, the daunting future book, can have both Sestanovich’s elegant prose and a cast of characters who breathe on the page.
Read
May 7, 2025I didn't get it
April 4, 2026
There seem to be shortages of most things these days, and everything seems to be becoming harder to acquire, and scarcer, but the one thing of which we’ll surely never have a shortage is a type of mellow, loveless novel, with competent but deadening prose, in which the author animates characters on the page to slake and lubricate a mood, or a particular way of referring to yourself, rather than a plot. Is Ask Me Again this sort of novel? See for yourself: the blurb has it as a novel which “explores how relationships can define us, change us and point us towards futures we might not have imagined for ourselves.” Sure, this doesn’t sound like groundbreaking stuff, but many readers may be attracted to the novel’s interest in exploring a platonic, rather than a romantic - although Jamie, the central male of the novel, would probably have it as agape - love, between a male and a female as they “come of age”, if not also by the novel’s promise to explore religious and political radicalism.
Ask Me Again is told over the shoulder of a girl called Eva, though to be frank, she may’s well be called anything, or indeed remain nameless, because, pensive, confused, introvert, and in a state of permanent bafflement as to the concept of her own existence, she is a carbon copy of every other protagonist in the other novels that have legitimised this one. In Eva, Sestanovich has succeeded in creating an utterly unremarkable protagonist, and yet not one whose disinterest is in itself a point of interest. That’s okay, though, because the novel’s real fascination is with Jamie, some of its unusually coddling and starstruck affection for whom can be immediately gleaned from that somewhat indulgent diminutive - though more on that later.
If the character of Eva is the latest in a long line of confused, unaffectionate, intellectually-minded novel protagonists, the likes of whom include the central spirits of every fiction ever penned by the likes of Naoise Dolan, Nicole Flattery, Thomas Morris, und so weiter, Jamie is, himself, I think, the newest incarnation of another type of fictional avatar, the character whose function in their novel is simply to be adored, to represent the flame of the passion of the universe, a point of gravitational fascination; the idea being, I suppose, that Eva, with her standardising, Everyman attitude to love and work and sex, and Jamie, with his turning away from inherited wealth, political activism, unconventional love for the arts and the natural world and his born again Christianity should cancel each other out, or create stimulating, generative conflict and interest.
This isn’t what happens, though; both Jamie and Eva just represent a different type of unassailable novelistic perfection. For the purposes of Sestanovich’s novel and legions of others like it, Eva is not just the perfect protagonist but the perfect person. Flawed, yes; complex, yes; but at the alter of the Stinging Fly genre of novel, a state of quiet, reflective, muddled indifference at the world is the Holy Grail of the socialisation process that consumes the first quarter of a person’s life. Or is it just that this mode of perception makes for easy novel-writing? Either way, a critic would be misguided to condemn or scrutinise any of this novel’s characters, and anyway the attempt would be futile, because the novel itself praises and adores this type of personality.
Enter Jamie, the character with whom everyone - Eva, Eva’s parents, clearly Sestanovich herself - are hopelessly in love. He’s everything Eva isn’t, and the sharpness of this contrast is threaded throughout the novel by Sestanovich with numerous unsubtle juxtapositions (to Jamie, walnuts smell “sharp and lemony”, to Eva, they smell “like furniture polish”). In keeping with the requirements of this genre of novel, sure, both of them are artistic, proto-intellectual, and culturally engaged, but where Jamie is more of a raw, magical force of nature, carving his way through Eva’s life, and her parents’ lives, and through the novel itself, Eva is rather like an engineer, curious and discriminating: “She liked poems, or the idea of poems: their difficulty.”
How like her relationship to Jamie himself. Eva enjoys figuring things out and following straight paths, and she likes to see a plan; the third act of the novel sees her find work as a journalist. Her confused but interrogative mindset is reflected by the novel: every chapter’s name is a question (“Where did you come from?”; “Can you feel that?”; “What’s it like?”). Eva’s character is inquisitive, but fundamentally quite pedestrian; the main interest for the reader comes in analysing Eva’s (and the novel’s) interest in Jamie, which comes across to me as rather exploitative. To both parties, Jamie is the perfect puzzle. For example, he may smile; but “Jamie smile[s] an abstract smile”.
The attempt to make sense of one another - though it is quite one sided - really is where the engagement between the two parties stops. Jamie, novelistically speaking, is only really there to circulate what is effectively Eva’s Bildungsroman, and to cast doubt on the emotional legitimacy of following the prim and proper path. The tension that gives Ask Me Again its three hundred pages of fuel is its reluctance to properly condone either strand of existence.
What does this mean? Well, for all the admiration and reverence that the novel has for its two central spirits, this is an amazingly cold and loveless narrative. I think this is due to the novel’s reluctance to view either character as flawed. To the novel, Jamie is just a saint; positively faultless; and Eva’s faults aren’t real faults. Reading the novel, I had to work to suppress the judgement that the novel, quite far from being an “exploration” of any theme, was really rather an exercise in animating feelings, concepts, patron saints and guardian angels flatly surplus to the reality of growing up. I don’t really mean that the novel comes across as an exercise in wish-fulfilment; but unfortunately, Sestanovich does seem to see that as a big part of novel writing, and in an essay partially on Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, has this to say: “The novel ends with Frances picking up her phone. It’s Nick calling, after months of silence, so it seems fair to ask: is this a dream? [/] And it is, of course. It’s Rooney’s. Because when you want “too much,” there’s a place […] to put your desires: a book.”
Quite. Sestanovich is keen on the ways in which reality can take on the air of fantasy, but less so on imbuing her fantasies with much semblance of reality. And the novel betrays its disinterest in the claim to realism via such similes as “a suddenness that seemed biblical”. A novel may be a system of feeling, but I don’t think it should be a system powered by and responsive to solely the intellectual and emotional passions of its author, and by and to a single mode of seeing or feeling. In fact, the entire world at large, and the spectrum of experience available to us all, is, in the novel, detrimentally reduced; there isn’t a single laugh, or joke, or moment of connection, on any of its three hundred pages. Not a single thing is extrinsic to the passive, disengaged, reflective, pensive mode of perception cherished as sacred by this genre of novel. Dialogue itself often serves only to voice some pseudo-philosophical, Nietzschean proclamations. (Even Eva’s grandmother, on her death bed, is given the line “If you know you’re going to fall […] jump.”) “If committing to one person is scary,” Eva at one point asks, “isn’t committing to all of humanity even scarier?” This very aloof, depressive, bewildered sense of resignation is both the cause and the consequence of this approach to novel-writing. It’s very limited; nothing can be interpreted by the novel outside of that particular mindspace. “When Eli asked if Eva wanted to cook dinner together,” we learn - Eli being Eva’s longstanding romantic entanglement - “the question did not seem difficult or dangerous.” There is a danger, though: the danger is the ridiculous and pompous tendency of the novel to imbue everything with a presiding mood of distancedly critical thoughtfulness:
“She made salad dressing, lemon juice stinging her fingers where she’d bitten the nails too short, and tossed the leaves until they glistened. There was salt scattered carelessly all over the countertop, but you could only see it in a certain light. They ate side by side, chewing loudly, their lips and hands shiny with grease. The salad shone, too. Eva felt the pleasure all through her body - the taste in her mouth, the warmth in her throat, something like gratitude all the way down in her gut. It was almost enough. But more was better, and this was another conviction her body told her, or gave her: that she could take even more, that she could feel even better.”
I like a bit of realism from novels that market themselves as being about the "real world" and near-contemporary political events. But the thing that the novel "can only see [...] in a certain light" seems to be reality itself. If the thing can't be perceived like how a Sally Rooney character would perceive it, it can't be perceived.
Ask Me Again is told over the shoulder of a girl called Eva, though to be frank, she may’s well be called anything, or indeed remain nameless, because, pensive, confused, introvert, and in a state of permanent bafflement as to the concept of her own existence, she is a carbon copy of every other protagonist in the other novels that have legitimised this one. In Eva, Sestanovich has succeeded in creating an utterly unremarkable protagonist, and yet not one whose disinterest is in itself a point of interest. That’s okay, though, because the novel’s real fascination is with Jamie, some of its unusually coddling and starstruck affection for whom can be immediately gleaned from that somewhat indulgent diminutive - though more on that later.
If the character of Eva is the latest in a long line of confused, unaffectionate, intellectually-minded novel protagonists, the likes of whom include the central spirits of every fiction ever penned by the likes of Naoise Dolan, Nicole Flattery, Thomas Morris, und so weiter, Jamie is, himself, I think, the newest incarnation of another type of fictional avatar, the character whose function in their novel is simply to be adored, to represent the flame of the passion of the universe, a point of gravitational fascination; the idea being, I suppose, that Eva, with her standardising, Everyman attitude to love and work and sex, and Jamie, with his turning away from inherited wealth, political activism, unconventional love for the arts and the natural world and his born again Christianity should cancel each other out, or create stimulating, generative conflict and interest.
This isn’t what happens, though; both Jamie and Eva just represent a different type of unassailable novelistic perfection. For the purposes of Sestanovich’s novel and legions of others like it, Eva is not just the perfect protagonist but the perfect person. Flawed, yes; complex, yes; but at the alter of the Stinging Fly genre of novel, a state of quiet, reflective, muddled indifference at the world is the Holy Grail of the socialisation process that consumes the first quarter of a person’s life. Or is it just that this mode of perception makes for easy novel-writing? Either way, a critic would be misguided to condemn or scrutinise any of this novel’s characters, and anyway the attempt would be futile, because the novel itself praises and adores this type of personality.
Enter Jamie, the character with whom everyone - Eva, Eva’s parents, clearly Sestanovich herself - are hopelessly in love. He’s everything Eva isn’t, and the sharpness of this contrast is threaded throughout the novel by Sestanovich with numerous unsubtle juxtapositions (to Jamie, walnuts smell “sharp and lemony”, to Eva, they smell “like furniture polish”). In keeping with the requirements of this genre of novel, sure, both of them are artistic, proto-intellectual, and culturally engaged, but where Jamie is more of a raw, magical force of nature, carving his way through Eva’s life, and her parents’ lives, and through the novel itself, Eva is rather like an engineer, curious and discriminating: “She liked poems, or the idea of poems: their difficulty.”
How like her relationship to Jamie himself. Eva enjoys figuring things out and following straight paths, and she likes to see a plan; the third act of the novel sees her find work as a journalist. Her confused but interrogative mindset is reflected by the novel: every chapter’s name is a question (“Where did you come from?”; “Can you feel that?”; “What’s it like?”). Eva’s character is inquisitive, but fundamentally quite pedestrian; the main interest for the reader comes in analysing Eva’s (and the novel’s) interest in Jamie, which comes across to me as rather exploitative. To both parties, Jamie is the perfect puzzle. For example, he may smile; but “Jamie smile[s] an abstract smile”.
The attempt to make sense of one another - though it is quite one sided - really is where the engagement between the two parties stops. Jamie, novelistically speaking, is only really there to circulate what is effectively Eva’s Bildungsroman, and to cast doubt on the emotional legitimacy of following the prim and proper path. The tension that gives Ask Me Again its three hundred pages of fuel is its reluctance to properly condone either strand of existence.
What does this mean? Well, for all the admiration and reverence that the novel has for its two central spirits, this is an amazingly cold and loveless narrative. I think this is due to the novel’s reluctance to view either character as flawed. To the novel, Jamie is just a saint; positively faultless; and Eva’s faults aren’t real faults. Reading the novel, I had to work to suppress the judgement that the novel, quite far from being an “exploration” of any theme, was really rather an exercise in animating feelings, concepts, patron saints and guardian angels flatly surplus to the reality of growing up. I don’t really mean that the novel comes across as an exercise in wish-fulfilment; but unfortunately, Sestanovich does seem to see that as a big part of novel writing, and in an essay partially on Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends, has this to say: “The novel ends with Frances picking up her phone. It’s Nick calling, after months of silence, so it seems fair to ask: is this a dream? [/] And it is, of course. It’s Rooney’s. Because when you want “too much,” there’s a place […] to put your desires: a book.”
Quite. Sestanovich is keen on the ways in which reality can take on the air of fantasy, but less so on imbuing her fantasies with much semblance of reality. And the novel betrays its disinterest in the claim to realism via such similes as “a suddenness that seemed biblical”. A novel may be a system of feeling, but I don’t think it should be a system powered by and responsive to solely the intellectual and emotional passions of its author, and by and to a single mode of seeing or feeling. In fact, the entire world at large, and the spectrum of experience available to us all, is, in the novel, detrimentally reduced; there isn’t a single laugh, or joke, or moment of connection, on any of its three hundred pages. Not a single thing is extrinsic to the passive, disengaged, reflective, pensive mode of perception cherished as sacred by this genre of novel. Dialogue itself often serves only to voice some pseudo-philosophical, Nietzschean proclamations. (Even Eva’s grandmother, on her death bed, is given the line “If you know you’re going to fall […] jump.”) “If committing to one person is scary,” Eva at one point asks, “isn’t committing to all of humanity even scarier?” This very aloof, depressive, bewildered sense of resignation is both the cause and the consequence of this approach to novel-writing. It’s very limited; nothing can be interpreted by the novel outside of that particular mindspace. “When Eli asked if Eva wanted to cook dinner together,” we learn - Eli being Eva’s longstanding romantic entanglement - “the question did not seem difficult or dangerous.” There is a danger, though: the danger is the ridiculous and pompous tendency of the novel to imbue everything with a presiding mood of distancedly critical thoughtfulness:
“She made salad dressing, lemon juice stinging her fingers where she’d bitten the nails too short, and tossed the leaves until they glistened. There was salt scattered carelessly all over the countertop, but you could only see it in a certain light. They ate side by side, chewing loudly, their lips and hands shiny with grease. The salad shone, too. Eva felt the pleasure all through her body - the taste in her mouth, the warmth in her throat, something like gratitude all the way down in her gut. It was almost enough. But more was better, and this was another conviction her body told her, or gave her: that she could take even more, that she could feel even better.”
I like a bit of realism from novels that market themselves as being about the "real world" and near-contemporary political events. But the thing that the novel "can only see [...] in a certain light" seems to be reality itself. If the thing can't be perceived like how a Sally Rooney character would perceive it, it can't be perceived.
August 3, 2025
Kind of a let down? The book starts off really intense with Eva and Jamie, who have a typical teenage dynamic: Eva is an insecure young woman who sees something in Jamie that he isn't, as he just hides behind pretentious phrases. Then, suddenly, they grow apart, but process gets pictured is so incidental and unimportant that the story is no longer about them both, but only about her. It's about all her developments, decisions, and guilt. I think I can only agree with most people here, and I'm reassured that it wasn't just me: I really didn't get the point? There are many good ideas in this book, but none of them are fully explored – only philosophical questions are asked, but no answers are provided. Kinda disappointing.
February 17, 2025
this was kind of crazy to read and made me miss philosophy tutes so much
January 24, 2026
Eva ha sedici anni quando incontra Jamie in una sala d’aspetto in ospedale. Lei appartiene alla classe media e vive a Brooklyn coi genitori, lui è cresciuto nell’attico del padre a Manhattan, ma d’istinto Eva riconosce in lui un pezzo di sé, o della persona che vorrebbe essere: Jamie è curioso, audace, aperto al mondo; mentre lei, cauta e riflessiva, si tiene sempre in disparte. La loro intesa si trasforma subito in un’amicizia profonda, fatta di grandi affinità, dubbi condivisi, ma anche di zone d’ombra cariche di mistero. Arrivati all’università, però, i loro destini si separano: Jamie lascia gli studi, si allontana dalla famiglia per aderire a un movimento di protesta e poi diventa membro di un gruppo cattolico; Eva si laurea e segue una strada all’apparenza già tracciata, ma l’influenza di Jamie resta una bussola che orienta la sua vita, persino quando l’amico sembra perdersi definitivamente. "Chiedimelo ancora" è la storia di Eva e Jamie, due persone “normali” che nell’amicizia trovano la chiave per diventare adulti insieme, affidandosi al proprio modo di sentire il mondo e le persone, così da coglierne l’essenza. Clare Sestanovich racconta la vita come un susseguirsi di domande, intime e talvolta scomode, e ci invita ad allenare sguardo e intuito per cercare le risposte nei gesti, nei dettagli, nei silenzi densi di significato.
Il romanzo d'esordio di Clare Sestanovich è strutturato attorno a una serie di quesiti. Ogni capitolo inizia con una domanda, come se ognuno di essi rappresenti una sorta di indagine: Quanto vale? L'hai visto? Da dove arrivi? e diverse altre. Tutto ciò risulta un semplice espediente letterario, ma crea una sorta di atmosfera di incertezza.
Il libro esplora il difficile percorso di crescita di una giovane donna e un'insolita amicizia tra Eva e Jamie, sedicenni, che si incontrano per caso. Lei viene da Brooklyn ed è figlia di genitori liberali della classe media; lui è cresciuto a Manhattan in una famiglia tanto disfunzionale quanto ricca. I loro background non potrebbero essere più diversi. Tuttavia, tra i due si forma subito un legame, radicato non nell'attrazione romantica, ma nella loro reciproca timidezza e nel disagio nei confronti della società moderna che porta Jamie ad abbandonare gli studi, esplorare la politica radicale e unirsi a una strana chiesa molto simile ad una setta. Nel frattempo, Eva frequenta il college, intraprende una carriera nel giornalismo e cerca di adattarsi ai suoi coetanei. Mentre lei e Jamie si allontanano, lei desidera ardentemente la loro vicinanza. Ma può essere recuperata? E possono entrambi trovare l'equilibrio che desiderano?
L'autrice americana cattura perfettamente le emozioni intense e confuse di Eva mentre attraversa i suoi vent'anni. Mentre Jamie si rifugia nel misticismo, Eva cerca disperatamente qualcuno che possa insegnarle come vivere una vita "normale".
Nonostante tutta la sua attenzione all'ansia e all'incertezza, tuttavia, questo romanzo non risulta deprimente. La penna austera ed elegante di Sestanovich risulta deliziosa. Non mancano momenti di ironica, come quando Eva descrive l'aldilà. Man mano che la trama avanza Eva acquisisce gradualmente empatia e auto accettazione, imparando a fare tesoro di piccoli piaceri come il giardinaggio o una passeggiata su una spiaggia dove ogni granello di sabbia e ogni goccia d'acqua sono illuminate dalla luce del sole.
Non si può dire che il romanzo sia un libro ricco di azione e alcuni lettori potrebbero trovare frustrante la sua conclusione aperta; tuttavia, consiglio il libro a chiunque sia interessato alle sfide emotive e professionali che devono affrontare i giovani di oggi.
Il romanzo d'esordio di Clare Sestanovich è strutturato attorno a una serie di quesiti. Ogni capitolo inizia con una domanda, come se ognuno di essi rappresenti una sorta di indagine: Quanto vale? L'hai visto? Da dove arrivi? e diverse altre. Tutto ciò risulta un semplice espediente letterario, ma crea una sorta di atmosfera di incertezza.
Il libro esplora il difficile percorso di crescita di una giovane donna e un'insolita amicizia tra Eva e Jamie, sedicenni, che si incontrano per caso. Lei viene da Brooklyn ed è figlia di genitori liberali della classe media; lui è cresciuto a Manhattan in una famiglia tanto disfunzionale quanto ricca. I loro background non potrebbero essere più diversi. Tuttavia, tra i due si forma subito un legame, radicato non nell'attrazione romantica, ma nella loro reciproca timidezza e nel disagio nei confronti della società moderna che porta Jamie ad abbandonare gli studi, esplorare la politica radicale e unirsi a una strana chiesa molto simile ad una setta. Nel frattempo, Eva frequenta il college, intraprende una carriera nel giornalismo e cerca di adattarsi ai suoi coetanei. Mentre lei e Jamie si allontanano, lei desidera ardentemente la loro vicinanza. Ma può essere recuperata? E possono entrambi trovare l'equilibrio che desiderano?
L'autrice americana cattura perfettamente le emozioni intense e confuse di Eva mentre attraversa i suoi vent'anni. Mentre Jamie si rifugia nel misticismo, Eva cerca disperatamente qualcuno che possa insegnarle come vivere una vita "normale".
Nonostante tutta la sua attenzione all'ansia e all'incertezza, tuttavia, questo romanzo non risulta deprimente. La penna austera ed elegante di Sestanovich risulta deliziosa. Non mancano momenti di ironica, come quando Eva descrive l'aldilà. Man mano che la trama avanza Eva acquisisce gradualmente empatia e auto accettazione, imparando a fare tesoro di piccoli piaceri come il giardinaggio o una passeggiata su una spiaggia dove ogni granello di sabbia e ogni goccia d'acqua sono illuminate dalla luce del sole.
Non si può dire che il romanzo sia un libro ricco di azione e alcuni lettori potrebbero trovare frustrante la sua conclusione aperta; tuttavia, consiglio il libro a chiunque sia interessato alle sfide emotive e professionali che devono affrontare i giovani di oggi.
December 26, 2025
1,9 – das wirkt irgendwie harsch, aber ich habe mich über dieses Buch auch geärgert. Die Beobachtungen und langsamen, lebensnahen Beschreibungen von scheinbar unscheinbaren, aber doch gehaltvollen Situationen haben mir gefallen, die Melancholie, die sich durch alles zieht, kenne ich selbst, aber es gibt kein Takeaway, keinen Handlungsstrang, die Figur scheint sich nicht weiterzuentwickeln und eigentlich wirkt alles nur schwer und schmerzhaft, ohne etwas Gehaltvolles auszusagen. Ich glaube nicht einmal, etwas zu übersehen, das hat es anstrengend gemacht.
January 28, 2026
3,5 for what is worth it
This book is beautifully written and I underlined a lot of passages. Nevertheless, I can’t say I loved it. It digresses completely from the initial plot, to a point where it no longer has a plot. I get that it is supposed to portray the intricacies and complexities of friendship and coming-of-age but I just found it cruel the way Eva looses touch with Jamie to a point of plain indifference. And as The Lumineers had put it in a song quite wisely “it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all, the opposite of love is indifference”.
The pace also killed me. I really wanted to connect with the book because, I say it again, it was very well written, but nothing really happened - and when it did, it was disregarded (I thought Jamie’s accident would be a turning point).
I’m really bummed because this had all the ingredients to be enjoyable. All in all, a lot of unfulfilled potential.
Well, this one’s on me for not trusting online ratings.
This book is beautifully written and I underlined a lot of passages. Nevertheless, I can’t say I loved it. It digresses completely from the initial plot, to a point where it no longer has a plot. I get that it is supposed to portray the intricacies and complexities of friendship and coming-of-age but I just found it cruel the way Eva looses touch with Jamie to a point of plain indifference. And as The Lumineers had put it in a song quite wisely “it’s better to feel pain than nothing at all, the opposite of love is indifference”.
The pace also killed me. I really wanted to connect with the book because, I say it again, it was very well written, but nothing really happened - and when it did, it was disregarded (I thought Jamie’s accident would be a turning point).
I’m really bummed because this had all the ingredients to be enjoyable. All in all, a lot of unfulfilled potential.
Well, this one’s on me for not trusting online ratings.
January 3, 2025
For a book that is all about searching for meaning and belonging, the narrative tone of this book is very shallow and unemotional. It hooked me in pretty well at first, but it didn’t really keep me in its grasp for the entire novel.
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!
August 4, 2024
Ask Me Again is a book that tries very hard to be smart. It should not try so hard to be smart. What it needs is a heartbeat. There's a lot of moments packaged as profound-- tons of 'let that sink in's-- but none of them have teeth. I didn't learn anything. The teeth Ask Me Again are in the parts that Claire neglected.
Eva (narrator) and the world she navigates are detached and gray. Passion, care, love, wonder, excitement, grief, sadness, and devastation are all alluded to. But they're rarely shown and they're never dwelled upon. There's a sensory, emotional *thump* missing. Eva doesn't have many passions, she doesn't have many friends. She allegedly falls in love, but it feels transactional. When she has sex it's to scratch an itch. These are sort of themes but they're minor ones. I can't quite fit myself in Eva's head.
I loved the scope and pace of the book. Seeing Evas life change was honest and refreshing. The time covered feels substantial. People & problems come and go. Jamie is the only constant but his relevance varies. It reflects life in a way traditional story structures can't. That made me happy.
If you like deep quotes then you will find plenty. If you tend to find the 'deep quote' aesthetic offsetting, then there might not be much for you here.
Eva (narrator) and the world she navigates are detached and gray. Passion, care, love, wonder, excitement, grief, sadness, and devastation are all alluded to. But they're rarely shown and they're never dwelled upon. There's a sensory, emotional *thump* missing. Eva doesn't have many passions, she doesn't have many friends. She allegedly falls in love, but it feels transactional. When she has sex it's to scratch an itch. These are sort of themes but they're minor ones. I can't quite fit myself in Eva's head.
I loved the scope and pace of the book. Seeing Evas life change was honest and refreshing. The time covered feels substantial. People & problems come and go. Jamie is the only constant but his relevance varies. It reflects life in a way traditional story structures can't. That made me happy.
If you like deep quotes then you will find plenty. If you tend to find the 'deep quote' aesthetic offsetting, then there might not be much for you here.
August 7, 2024
Gonna need a few days to think on this one (or for a friend to read it so we can discuss) as I'm not quite sure what to make of it. The middle section, which becomes very much about progressive politics and churches, felt quite directionless when I was in it, which frustrated me. By the end, though, I think perhaps the whole book is exploring the ways in which we make meaning of the world (through our relationships, our upbringing, our academic experiences, politics, religion, advice columns) and how, even with all of those things, we often end up coming up short (but also is that just the theme of my own life at the moment? Do books have themes and meanings independent to those that we bring to the reading experience?). Sestanovich's sentence by sentence level writing continues to be beautiful though (really loved her debut short story collection Objects of Desire: Stories) and I'm eager to see what she does next.
August 19, 2024
I completely loved this. Sestanovich is such a strong and technical writer.
We meet Eva, at 16, when she meets Jamie. They’re both New York City kids, though Jamie wealthier, with less stable roots. We follow them through the end of high school, into college and their early twenties. They’re precocious, irritating, and always searching. They ask big questions, look for “truth,” purpose, and belonging.
I really believe the writing here ensures this story and these characters feel earnest and new. I found myself totally consumed by this from the first page. And was impressed by my interest in the side characters introduced throughout. The central friendship, while vexing and unstable, was, for me, full of heart.
There’s also a lot going on beneath the surface, a lot to glean on a reread or in discussion. The ending!?
We meet Eva, at 16, when she meets Jamie. They’re both New York City kids, though Jamie wealthier, with less stable roots. We follow them through the end of high school, into college and their early twenties. They’re precocious, irritating, and always searching. They ask big questions, look for “truth,” purpose, and belonging.
I really believe the writing here ensures this story and these characters feel earnest and new. I found myself totally consumed by this from the first page. And was impressed by my interest in the side characters introduced throughout. The central friendship, while vexing and unstable, was, for me, full of heart.
There’s also a lot going on beneath the surface, a lot to glean on a reread or in discussion. The ending!?
July 10, 2025
3.75/5 (rounded)
everyone seems to be on the same consensus that nothing really happened in this, to which I agree, but I think that added to its charm. The characters were very eye-roll-worthy at times, but again that gave them some charm. The writing was beautiful, but it seemed to introduce ideas and characters with little to no reasoning (perhaps I didn’t pick up on it) and then just carried on like nothing happened. It’s certainly not a bad book and would appeal to those who like character stories but something was just missing !!!
everyone seems to be on the same consensus that nothing really happened in this, to which I agree, but I think that added to its charm. The characters were very eye-roll-worthy at times, but again that gave them some charm. The writing was beautiful, but it seemed to introduce ideas and characters with little to no reasoning (perhaps I didn’t pick up on it) and then just carried on like nothing happened. It’s certainly not a bad book and would appeal to those who like character stories but something was just missing !!!
June 25, 2024
2.5 stars
This book didn't actually follow through on the synopsis and somewhat just stopped talking about Jamie. It dragged and didn't have much of a plot, but rather than focusing on character development, it felt like it was just random little things from the main character (but she didn't really show development in my opinion).
This book didn't actually follow through on the synopsis and somewhat just stopped talking about Jamie. It dragged and didn't have much of a plot, but rather than focusing on character development, it felt like it was just random little things from the main character (but she didn't really show development in my opinion).
September 7, 2024
This book was such a disappointment. It started off good and was well-written, but then quickly lost its focus. For the back half, Jamie wasn't even really an important character anymore. I made myself skim to the end because I spent so much time reading this book, but I would not reccomend it. Absolutely no cohesive through line at all.
July 15, 2024
Exception that proves the rule! (The rule: blurbs commending prose in contemporary fiction are full of shit)
What a relief to find a new book full of good sentences! It's also very thoughtful about friendship and human relationships generally. I read it in like 24 hours.
What a relief to find a new book full of good sentences! It's also very thoughtful about friendship and human relationships generally. I read it in like 24 hours.
January 13, 2025
Ask Me Again is a coming-of-age story with a difference. The whole way through it was following Eva and Jamie's lives, wondering when they would come back together and the answer to my questions astounded me.
The writing is very engaging and thought-provoking, and that is the true beauty of this novel. It captures your attention and makes you ask the same questions as Eva and Jamie are facing themselves. You can't help but feel connected to the characters and relate to how they handle the life they find themselves in.
It's a novel that sits with you long after you've finished reading, leaving you constantly wondering and questioning what happens next.
The writing is very engaging and thought-provoking, and that is the true beauty of this novel. It captures your attention and makes you ask the same questions as Eva and Jamie are facing themselves. You can't help but feel connected to the characters and relate to how they handle the life they find themselves in.
It's a novel that sits with you long after you've finished reading, leaving you constantly wondering and questioning what happens next.
June 2, 2025
This is a coming of age novel about Eva and Jamie who meet by chance at a hospital and develop a strong friendship. We follow their development through teens and into adulthood.
If you are hoping for a One Day vibe then you'll be sadly disappointed. In fact nothing big really happens at all throughout but I felt myself compelled to keep reading.
I can't really say why I enjoyed it - perhaps the well rounded characters meant you really got to know Eva and never quite knowing Jamie - just how it's supposed to be.
If you are hoping for a One Day vibe then you'll be sadly disappointed. In fact nothing big really happens at all throughout but I felt myself compelled to keep reading.
I can't really say why I enjoyed it - perhaps the well rounded characters meant you really got to know Eva and never quite knowing Jamie - just how it's supposed to be.
February 27, 2026
Frag mich noch einmal war für mich insgesamt ein solides, aber kein durchgehend überzeugendes Leseerlebnis. Besonders positiv ist mir der Schreibstil aufgefallen. Clare Sestanovich schreibt sehr klar, reflektiert und sprachlich präzise. Ihre Art, innere Unsicherheiten und leise Enttäuschungen darzustellen, wirkt durchdacht und literarisch anspruchsvoll. Die Atmosphäre ist ruhig und konzentriert, was gut zum Thema der Orientierungslosigkeit passt.
Gleichzeitig muss ich sagen, dass sich der Roman stellenweise gezogen hat. Die Handlung entwickelt wenig Dynamik, und manche Passagen wirken sehr distanziert. Dadurch fiel es mir teilweise schwer, emotional ganz einzutauchen. Die Offenheit vieler Fragen ist zwar konsequent umgesetzt, kann aber auch ermüdend wirken.
Insgesamt war das Buch für mich in Ordnung. Es überzeugt vor allem sprachlich, verliert jedoch durch sein ruhiges Tempo und die geringe Spannung etwas an Wirkung.
Gleichzeitig muss ich sagen, dass sich der Roman stellenweise gezogen hat. Die Handlung entwickelt wenig Dynamik, und manche Passagen wirken sehr distanziert. Dadurch fiel es mir teilweise schwer, emotional ganz einzutauchen. Die Offenheit vieler Fragen ist zwar konsequent umgesetzt, kann aber auch ermüdend wirken.
Insgesamt war das Buch für mich in Ordnung. Es überzeugt vor allem sprachlich, verliert jedoch durch sein ruhiges Tempo und die geringe Spannung etwas an Wirkung.
February 11, 2025
Slow pace but I think she does a great job at capturing mundane experiences and depicting them as the sort of essence of life. Not a super uplifting read but lots of moments that I find myself still turning over in my head.
This is the kind of book that I should read again...!
This is the kind of book that I should read again...!
Read
March 7, 2025Freshman year, Eva gets good advice from new friend Lorrie: “Flirt with grad students, fuck grad students, but don’t make the mistake of actually talking to them. They sound ridiculous when they talk.”
August 25, 2024
This book was like eating candy! So beautifully written
June 14, 2024
This book is a coming of age story following a girl over the course of 10 years or so. The entire plot is inconsequential. The author uses no foreshadowing or references anything else that has happened throughout the book almost ever. Almost like an anthropological diary of the girl’s life.
The main character has terribly low self-esteem and remains quite juvenile despite her aging and having new experiences.
The book is incredibly descriptive and perceptive when describing every interaction between characters. The side characters are all interesting but it doesn’t quite make sense why they continue to engage with the main character. Her life-long best friend’s side story is captivating then devastating.
I read this book in three days. It was a strange nostalgic and introspective escape but left me feeling sad for everyone involved. Very teenage-girl philosophical and at times meta.
The main character has terribly low self-esteem and remains quite juvenile despite her aging and having new experiences.
The book is incredibly descriptive and perceptive when describing every interaction between characters. The side characters are all interesting but it doesn’t quite make sense why they continue to engage with the main character. Her life-long best friend’s side story is captivating then devastating.
I read this book in three days. It was a strange nostalgic and introspective escape but left me feeling sad for everyone involved. Very teenage-girl philosophical and at times meta.
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