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A World of One's Own
Adam was a hero, an Adonis, ageless and virile- at least in his own mind.
Although some people saw him in a similar light, the woman whose opinion mattered most to him did not.
On paper, he had it all: a good job, a beautiful home, and a wife who adored him.
It had been a long time since he had moved from the small town in western France to Paris, and he had almost left those times behind. Just when he had nearly let go of his youthful love, chance reawakened his old obsession.
The fact that the woman of his dreams did not return his feelings, either then or later, awakened strange, sick, violent thoughts in his mind. And the more he fantasized, the more his thoughts spurred him into action.
Although some people saw him in a similar light, the woman whose opinion mattered most to him did not.
On paper, he had it all: a good job, a beautiful home, and a wife who adored him.
It had been a long time since he had moved from the small town in western France to Paris, and he had almost left those times behind. Just when he had nearly let go of his youthful love, chance reawakened his old obsession.
The fact that the woman of his dreams did not return his feelings, either then or later, awakened strange, sick, violent thoughts in his mind. And the more he fantasized, the more his thoughts spurred him into action.
178 pages, Paperback
Published November 3, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 19, 2025
The book can be read in different ways. It can be read as an anti-Turandot: Adam falls in love with the image of a woman named Anne. She hardly notices him until a tragic encounter—echoing the horror of Turandot’s ancestry—at the Hotel Mandarin. Twenty-five years pass. On her birthday, she reenters his thoughts. He stands at his window; it is not the stars but the snowflakes that tremble with hope. This is his Nessun dorma: he wants to conquer, to win. He begins to make plans—but, as desire would have it, these plans remain unrealized.
When approached by him, Anne repeatedly rejects Adam, just as Turandot rejects Calaf. To Adam, Anne becomes the frigid femme fatale, Andersen’s Snow Queen—waiting, unknowingly, for the savior whose kiss will melt her icy resistance and awaken her latent love. It would render Anne a “non-psychological character,” a “Woman-Thing,” if the novel did not give her a voice—precisely what distinguishes her from Turandot. If Puccini’s abrupt death prevented him from acknowledging the failure of his ending, this book redeems that loss by refusing to reduce Anne to “an ordinary sentimental woman who surrenders herself before potent male advances” (Žižek). And yet Adam seems to expect the same logic that worked for Calaf—that a violent, “half-raping” kiss might free Anne’s love for him. Instead, the reader is offered a less direct and perhaps more complex answer to the question: What does she want? What is her desire?
The book can be read as an anatomy of desire and fantasy. From the moment Adam first sees Anne, he is fascinated. Their initial encounter unfolds almost cinematically—in an office foyer that resembles a movie theater: windowless, dimly lit by a single lamp, with plush armchairs clustered on one side (the spectators’ side, where Adam sits) and, opposite them, an uncomfortable wooden bench, where Anne chooses to sit. She is absorbed in a phone call, seemingly unaware of Adam, who watches her in silence. Her voice is too soft to be heard, which only heightens her presence as an image. “Before she arrived, he had been utterly bored—glancing at the lamp and his watch, wondering if he should just leave,” like an audience waiting for the film to begin. In this scene, Adam becomes a spectator: seated before a woman-as-image. He becomes a voyeur, like Jeff in Rear Window or Scotty in Vertigo.
Anne appears to him as an image on a screen—a motif repeated throughout the novel (windscreen, PC, phone). Screens and windows capture the frame that structures his fantasy and thus his reality. As Žižek notes, the fantasy screen not only frames reality but also shields the subject from directly encountering the horror of the Real. What horror? Haneke’s The Piano Teacher offers a powerful hint here: the horror of fantasy realized. It’s very telling how Adam can never go till the end of his fantasies but always gets interrupted by his own thoughts, or how something always seems to prevent him from realizing the fantasy. By the novel’s end, he is still planning—something dark and desperate. It is clear: desire wants to desire. It resists satisfaction. It circles its object in endless repetition. By the final page, as Adam sits in his car, we are left to ask whether his desire could ever approach realization so closely that, to preserve itself, it would choose to destroy its own object.
So what does Anne desire? Around what thing does she circle? Perhaps she longs for an (im)possible escape from a life she cannot truly abandon—an escape into the landscapes of her childhood memory. Perhaps her desire is nostalgia. The word derives from the Greek νόστος (home, return to home) and ἄλγος (pain), forming a compound that, in Anne’s case, carries a double resonance: she longs for her childhood, yet the very same “home” is also the site of her painful experience. We might even risk suggesting that it is precisely because of this traumatic event coinciding with (the place of) her early memories—the original trauma of the subject, its splitting out with a constitutive negativity or lack—that nostalgia can take the form of desire.
There are countless readings of the novel: a portrait of an obsessional stalker who keeps himself from his object through the enjoyment of his rituals; an inversion of the femme fatale narrative; an emancipatory reading that recalls the famous claim that “The woman does not exist”; or simply an entertaining story with suspense that we can enjoy after a busy day. But perhaps the most useful reading is the most modest and the simplest one, one that nevertheless requires us to abandon the binary (male-female) logic of our discourse and attempt a more universal one: what if there is an Adam, an Anne, a Mrs. Thompson in all of us? What if we all wrestle with the way our fantasies structure our realities? What if we, too—like Babett— escape to a dream that is precisely our world (our reality), rather than face the horror (of the Real)? Because the woman indeed doesn’t exist (not in the biological sense, of course, but as a symbolic category), and this can be a starting point for shaping our realities in a way that loosens society’s grip on us.
If Flaubert said, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” then Winterberg—and perhaps we readers as well—might echo Lenehan from Ulysses: “Madam, I’m Adam.”
When approached by him, Anne repeatedly rejects Adam, just as Turandot rejects Calaf. To Adam, Anne becomes the frigid femme fatale, Andersen’s Snow Queen—waiting, unknowingly, for the savior whose kiss will melt her icy resistance and awaken her latent love. It would render Anne a “non-psychological character,” a “Woman-Thing,” if the novel did not give her a voice—precisely what distinguishes her from Turandot. If Puccini’s abrupt death prevented him from acknowledging the failure of his ending, this book redeems that loss by refusing to reduce Anne to “an ordinary sentimental woman who surrenders herself before potent male advances” (Žižek). And yet Adam seems to expect the same logic that worked for Calaf—that a violent, “half-raping” kiss might free Anne’s love for him. Instead, the reader is offered a less direct and perhaps more complex answer to the question: What does she want? What is her desire?
The book can be read as an anatomy of desire and fantasy. From the moment Adam first sees Anne, he is fascinated. Their initial encounter unfolds almost cinematically—in an office foyer that resembles a movie theater: windowless, dimly lit by a single lamp, with plush armchairs clustered on one side (the spectators’ side, where Adam sits) and, opposite them, an uncomfortable wooden bench, where Anne chooses to sit. She is absorbed in a phone call, seemingly unaware of Adam, who watches her in silence. Her voice is too soft to be heard, which only heightens her presence as an image. “Before she arrived, he had been utterly bored—glancing at the lamp and his watch, wondering if he should just leave,” like an audience waiting for the film to begin. In this scene, Adam becomes a spectator: seated before a woman-as-image. He becomes a voyeur, like Jeff in Rear Window or Scotty in Vertigo.
Anne appears to him as an image on a screen—a motif repeated throughout the novel (windscreen, PC, phone). Screens and windows capture the frame that structures his fantasy and thus his reality. As Žižek notes, the fantasy screen not only frames reality but also shields the subject from directly encountering the horror of the Real. What horror? Haneke’s The Piano Teacher offers a powerful hint here: the horror of fantasy realized. It’s very telling how Adam can never go till the end of his fantasies but always gets interrupted by his own thoughts, or how something always seems to prevent him from realizing the fantasy. By the novel’s end, he is still planning—something dark and desperate. It is clear: desire wants to desire. It resists satisfaction. It circles its object in endless repetition. By the final page, as Adam sits in his car, we are left to ask whether his desire could ever approach realization so closely that, to preserve itself, it would choose to destroy its own object.
So what does Anne desire? Around what thing does she circle? Perhaps she longs for an (im)possible escape from a life she cannot truly abandon—an escape into the landscapes of her childhood memory. Perhaps her desire is nostalgia. The word derives from the Greek νόστος (home, return to home) and ἄλγος (pain), forming a compound that, in Anne’s case, carries a double resonance: she longs for her childhood, yet the very same “home” is also the site of her painful experience. We might even risk suggesting that it is precisely because of this traumatic event coinciding with (the place of) her early memories—the original trauma of the subject, its splitting out with a constitutive negativity or lack—that nostalgia can take the form of desire.
There are countless readings of the novel: a portrait of an obsessional stalker who keeps himself from his object through the enjoyment of his rituals; an inversion of the femme fatale narrative; an emancipatory reading that recalls the famous claim that “The woman does not exist”; or simply an entertaining story with suspense that we can enjoy after a busy day. But perhaps the most useful reading is the most modest and the simplest one, one that nevertheless requires us to abandon the binary (male-female) logic of our discourse and attempt a more universal one: what if there is an Adam, an Anne, a Mrs. Thompson in all of us? What if we all wrestle with the way our fantasies structure our realities? What if we, too—like Babett— escape to a dream that is precisely our world (our reality), rather than face the horror (of the Real)? Because the woman indeed doesn’t exist (not in the biological sense, of course, but as a symbolic category), and this can be a starting point for shaping our realities in a way that loosens society’s grip on us.
If Flaubert said, “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” then Winterberg—and perhaps we readers as well—might echo Lenehan from Ulysses: “Madam, I’m Adam.”
May 9, 2026
Thank you LBT for having me on this book review tour and for my gifted copy of this epub!!
I love this cover so much. It was so well done. I have to say it’s what drew me to the book!!
This was a really unique book like I think it’s a psychological thriller but it also seems to have a lot of mythology to it like dealing with Greek and Roman’s.
This was a definitely engaging book that’s for sure. I mean there was so much to this read !!
Adam really annoyed me. He thought he was so special and like a god. He had it all he really did. But he had a secret a bad one. He was stalking his love from when he was a teenager her name is Ann. His wife no idea which is crazy to me. Like how ?! I mean he’s good. Really good. I’m not sure I would be able to pull it off in the least.
I think for me my favorite parts were when Anne was talking with Mrs. Thompson so good. I was so sucked in to this. This book really just shows what happens when Adam can’t grasp reality I mean I feel like this is something that probably happens in real life more than we even know or realize.
I know my best friend growing up when she was in college she had a stalker she knew about him and she had to report it and everything she was terrified. She didn’t know what he was capable of or what he would do. She lived in the fear for a long time !!!
Overall this was a really fast read. Really good and will leave you wanting more by this author !!! Least did for me !!
Highly recommended this read for sure !! Can’t wait for more by this author. I really can’t.
I love this cover so much. It was so well done. I have to say it’s what drew me to the book!!
This was a really unique book like I think it’s a psychological thriller but it also seems to have a lot of mythology to it like dealing with Greek and Roman’s.
This was a definitely engaging book that’s for sure. I mean there was so much to this read !!
Adam really annoyed me. He thought he was so special and like a god. He had it all he really did. But he had a secret a bad one. He was stalking his love from when he was a teenager her name is Ann. His wife no idea which is crazy to me. Like how ?! I mean he’s good. Really good. I’m not sure I would be able to pull it off in the least.
I think for me my favorite parts were when Anne was talking with Mrs. Thompson so good. I was so sucked in to this. This book really just shows what happens when Adam can’t grasp reality I mean I feel like this is something that probably happens in real life more than we even know or realize.
I know my best friend growing up when she was in college she had a stalker she knew about him and she had to report it and everything she was terrified. She didn’t know what he was capable of or what he would do. She lived in the fear for a long time !!!
Overall this was a really fast read. Really good and will leave you wanting more by this author !!! Least did for me !!
Highly recommended this read for sure !! Can’t wait for more by this author. I really can’t.
May 6, 2026
‘A World of One’s Own’ is a captivating exploration of obsession, self-delusion, the reverberations of trauma, and the search for answers. This is the first book that I have read by the author, and I found it to be an engaging and satisfying read. Although packaged as a modern psychological thriller, it has many tropes from Greek and Roman mythology, especially when it comes to possession and obsession.
Paul thinks he is god’s gift. He seems to have a good life— steady job, a nice home, and a wife who loves him. But Paul has a secret. He stalks an old love— Anne. He is self-indulgent in his fantasies, and Anne is blissfully unaware. They knew each other as teenagers but have not seen each other in decades. But Paul is watching, waiting, and plotting…
This was an intimate and unflinching portrait of one man’s inability to grasp reality. Anne was his siren, depicted as being cold but yet his desire could not be tamed. Anne’s character softens as the book progresses, and her encounters with Mrs. Thompson were some of my favourite passages of the book.
This was such a quick read, and that was all down to the standard of the writing. It drew you in, and then you suddenly find yourself at the end of the book! Its character development was pitch-perfect, and the tension was palpable. I will be keeping an eye out for what the author does next.
Let me know if you pick this one up!
May 11, 2026
Firstly, a moment for the cover if you will. I know we don’t judge books by the cover but this one spoke to me and I had to read it. There’s just something about the way those Os looped together that really appealed to me. Anyway, to get on to the inside of the book, this was an extremely quick read for me. Coming in at less than 200 pages, I was able to race through it in one sitting. I enjoyed the premise of the story and the way all the characters were linked. It felt like there were a lot of characters but each one played a necessary part in the story. To me, the writing and the story telling seemed very matter of fact. I did wonder if perhaps either English wasn’t the author’s first language or if the book had been translated from another language. I didn’t feel much emotion when reading, even though emotive subjects were covered. It was an enjoyable read though I felt like the ending could have given more. I read digitally and tried a few times to swipe the last page onwards because I felt like that wasn’t it. Nevertheless I’m glad I read this one. There should be a trigger warning for rape/ SA so please proceed with caution. A solid four stars from me.
May 4, 2026
World of One's Own is a phenomenal read from start to finish. I will never know how Susan Winterberg packed so much into such a short story.
I was hooked on a journey, which took me on a ride of unknown anticipation and questioning everything.
The feeling I was playing dot to dot throughout, the final connection just blew my mind!
I would 100% recommend this read for all you psychological thriller fans out there.
Be ready to be taken on a path of unpredictability, sadness and reflection.
I was hooked on a journey, which took me on a ride of unknown anticipation and questioning everything.
The feeling I was playing dot to dot throughout, the final connection just blew my mind!
I would 100% recommend this read for all you psychological thriller fans out there.
Be ready to be taken on a path of unpredictability, sadness and reflection.
May 7, 2026
📆 single timeline.
👀 single POV
🐢 -🐇 medium-paced
This was one of those books where my mind was desperateley grasping at threads, trying to link them together but never quite managing it. Then all of a sudden things clicked into place and it made a lot more sense. I really enjoy books like this, where I'm never quite sure what's happening.
For me this was a quick read which built up really slowly, giving us a real chance to get to know the characters. The ending felt a little rushed though, there was definitely something missing for me there.
👀 single POV
🐢 -🐇 medium-paced
This was one of those books where my mind was desperateley grasping at threads, trying to link them together but never quite managing it. Then all of a sudden things clicked into place and it made a lot more sense. I really enjoy books like this, where I'm never quite sure what's happening.
For me this was a quick read which built up really slowly, giving us a real chance to get to know the characters. The ending felt a little rushed though, there was definitely something missing for me there.
May 4, 2026
Well this was a twisty, turning and captivating read!
I absolutely love how the characters points of view were very cleverly and seamlessly merged together within a chapter. It made it feel as though nothing could be missed.
This book was a fast paced page turner. I read it in half a day.
Each character changed my perspective of them as their truths were told and things started to unravel then piece together.
But the end??? I have questions!!
I absolutely love how the characters points of view were very cleverly and seamlessly merged together within a chapter. It made it feel as though nothing could be missed.
This book was a fast paced page turner. I read it in half a day.
Each character changed my perspective of them as their truths were told and things started to unravel then piece together.
But the end??? I have questions!!
May 8, 2026
A World of One’s Own is twisty thriller with several surprises in store for the reader. Nothing was more surprising than the ending, though. I have questions!
I struggled to put the book down because I wanted to know what was happening. At 178 pages, it’s a quick read, thank goodness, so you don't have to wait long to get to see how just how messed up people can be.
I found A World of One’s Own to be a 5 out of 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read.
I struggled to put the book down because I wanted to know what was happening. At 178 pages, it’s a quick read, thank goodness, so you don't have to wait long to get to see how just how messed up people can be.
I found A World of One’s Own to be a 5 out of 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read.
May 9, 2026
A World of One’s Own was way more emotional and immersive than I expected. The story has this quiet, eerie atmosphere that makes it hard to stop reading because you constantly want to know what happens next.
I also loved how realistic the characters felt flawed, emotional, and believable. A few slower moments actually worked well with the mood of the book.
Definitely one of those late night reads that stays in your head afterward. A 4.5 for me
I also loved how realistic the characters felt flawed, emotional, and believable. A few slower moments actually worked well with the mood of the book.
Definitely one of those late night reads that stays in your head afterward. A 4.5 for me
May 11, 2026
A World of One's Own by Susan Winterberg.
This was a really good read. I loved the cover. That's why I signed up for this tour. I did find the story a little slow. Then I couldn't put it down. It got really good. I really didn't like Adam at all. My favourite part was when Anne was with Mrs Thompson. This was a unique and different book. I really hope there is more to come. I want more.
This was a really good read. I loved the cover. That's why I signed up for this tour. I did find the story a little slow. Then I couldn't put it down. It got really good. I really didn't like Adam at all. My favourite part was when Anne was with Mrs Thompson. This was a unique and different book. I really hope there is more to come. I want more.
May 9, 2026
An extremely fast paced and tense novella. At under two hundred pages the story moves along quickly. The narrative frequently changes perspective. These short chapters also kept the pace up and so I couldn't help but finish reading in one sitting.
There's an intensity to the storyline. Adam has an unhealthy obsession with Anne. The backstory unfolds from twenty five years ago whilst in present day Adam's obsession ramps up. It's obvious he has thoughts of grandeur. In his mind she wants him as much as he wants her.
As the reader you can feel something is accumulating. It was tense just waiting to find out what Adam's next move will be.
Overall, an immersive and tense quick read.
There's an intensity to the storyline. Adam has an unhealthy obsession with Anne. The backstory unfolds from twenty five years ago whilst in present day Adam's obsession ramps up. It's obvious he has thoughts of grandeur. In his mind she wants him as much as he wants her.
As the reader you can feel something is accumulating. It was tense just waiting to find out what Adam's next move will be.
Overall, an immersive and tense quick read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews