Romantic Abjection

by Danielle Chelosky

78 pages, Paperback

Published September 22, 2026

About the author

Danielle Chelosky is a writer and journalist from New York. She works at Stereogum and has bylines in NPR, The Fader, and Billboard. She is an editor at Hobart and an editorial assistant at Amphetamine Sulphate. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 2022 and was awarded the Lori Hertzberg Prize for Creativity. She is the author of PREGAMING GRIEF and BABY BRUISE.

Reviews

[Chris | Company Pants]

I have a document that contains seven different attempts of mine to review Danielle Chelosky’s Romantic Abjection. This is attempt number eight.

A bit of disclosure: Danielle emailed me a copy of her book all the way back at the beginning of August. I finished reading it that same day and then read it once more about a week later. Since then, I’ve written and deleted thousands of words and found myself staring at the blinking text icon on my laptop for more hours than I want to admit to anyone reading this.

I’ve attempted to step outside of myself and look at this piece of writing objectively and when I say objectively, what I actually mean is to look at it without examining the parallels between my own personal history and the story that Danielle has written. You know, without doing that thing where you cram yourself into the narrative and instead just allow the work speak for itself.
But isn’t a push toward that inescapable desire to look inward the mark of a truly great piece of art? Isn’t it supposed to shock you into a gasping, breathless place where you can’t help but want to grant it permission to speak for you, to help bring a definition to you, to let it explain you because it’s figured you out a little bit better than you’ve ever been able to?

Maybe it’s just me that approaches things this way. It’s not, but that feels like something that you’re supposed to say before following it up with the quintessential prose tail-tuck: maybe I’m just overthinking this.

Romantic Abjection is a novella told in three parts that focus on two distinct time periods in the life of the unnamed woman at the heart of the story. We meet her in her mid-twenties amidst the emotional chaos of a crush on a fellow writer and follow the slow burn of their relationship. Theirs is a stuttering fall into some sort of romance that is filled with alcohol and self-doubt that you immediately understand the balance of on page one when the narrator admits, “She wrote stories about him and he told her not to publish them.”

In the eventual fallout of that relationship, while our protagonist soaks in the quiet ambiance of the creeping rebuilding era that often follows the end of something that actually felt like it mattered, we are granted access to a flashback vignette taking place ten years in the past, immediately thrown into the self-medicating haze of being fifteen years old and hopelessly broken by the weight of heartache and longing of a first love gone haywire.

Presented in a style of stream of consciousness journaling that harkens back to a very specific and definitive brand of Tumblr-speak, the contrast between the two eras presented in Romantic Abjection is clear in the overall tone of the writing and in the emotional maturity on display and yet eerily similar in portraying the impact and aftermath of the emotional gut punch that comes along with the end of even a case of mostly one-sided love.

Danielle does a masterful job of presenting these two snapshots of a life that are separated by a decade and yet forever connected by an emotional thread that I remember was somewhat perfectly described in the film version of High Fidelity when it’s central character lamented that, “All my romantic stories are a scrambled version of that first one.” (A quote presented here wiped completely free of the disturbing early 2000s misogyny that occurs exactly two sentences before this line.)

Despite both slices of time being gorgeously represented by the directness of Danielle’s writing, she absolutely nails the tenor and vibe of her fifteen year old era. I was immediately transported to a time in my own existence spent driving aimlessly around my town with friends in search of whatever might light us up that night as we each staved off whatever personal panics we were barely able to keep under wraps from each other as the spells and potions of unfamiliar substances would wash over our personality and give us permission to become someone new.

Romantic Abjection’s biggest success is it’s ability to look at both the present and into the past at the most awkward, painful and often embarrassing moments that spawn out of feeling miserable about love and instead of retreating from them in a cool distance, it makes the decision to treat them as the formative and impactful moments that they are in urging us to expand who we are as autonomous beings while propelling us towards a more honest and genuine version of who we will eventually become.

In circumstances in which most people would choose to look back at the cast of characters that played the biggest role in these memories and choose to represent them cruelly in an ode to their own past transgressions, Danielle makes the choice to treat each of them with a tenderness and a sense of unique identity that they may not even deserve. It’s extremely effective and removes any sort of barrier or distance between you as the reader and the story itself, instead evoking a feeling that each of these moments occurred in your own life. In truth, maybe they all have to some degree.

There is a third act to Romantic Abjection that admittedly, I wasn’t expecting when I felt the direction that the story was heading. I have no desire to spoil any aspect of it except to say that it’s existence is a bold text reminder to me of why I believe that Danielle is one of the most honest and talented writers working today and whose prowess as a storyteller and documentarian of her generation and it’s trappings is growing exponentially every single moment that her fingers tap the keys of her laptop.

A few nights ago, I had a chance to escape the house for a couple of hours and made the decision to drive aimlessly around this town where I now live but was not raised. My car wasn’t stuffed with friends in various states of emotional decay and I wasn’t moving from one sketchy party to the next like I had done so many times in the past, but the music was loud and my thoughts were even louder as I searched for those backroads where a glance out of the window would show me the wealth of stars that the lights downtown always obscure.

Towards the end of my drive, lost in some memory of days long gone, I started formulating what it is about Romantic Abjection that makes it feel so necessary, so vital to an understanding of what it is to be human. Seconds later, in what felt like a fitting nod from the universe, the voice of Adam McIlwee soared through the confines of my car and took exactly seven words against my 1500 to sum things up: “It’s a cruel world, but it’s cool.”

Thank you to Danielle Chelosky and Far West Press for allowing me the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of Romantic Abjection and to review my time spent with it.

[Sophia June]

Inhaled it. Perfect ending

[Myles Manceaux]

Good book, but expected more from this author after some very dense topical focus in Female Loneliness Epidemic. Nonetheless I plan on rereading it and there seems to be some really thought provoking cultural and social commentary.

Overall disappointed with the lack of progress in the author’s scope or setting and its insistence on being absolute autofiction, despite the ending culminating in the question. The art does justify itself. Whether or not it’s important is up to us, but I’d say if important fiction for this new generation ends up mostly being about writers and their writer friends and readings and books, that would be a very unfortunate waste of talent, focus, money, and opportunity.

I did really enjoy the pacing until the weird transition home and into the flashback, as well as the aesthetics until that point also. Part three is also strong. Felt the worst about the aesthetics of the second part until the end leading up to the carnival except for the scenes at Henry’s house and the party, those were good.

Not sure what to make of the last part with her asking if we feel bad for her, but I kinda dig it, I don’t know. Are you trying to provoke more incel rage Danielle???? Very clever! At first I was confused when I read the paragraph about the incel haters at the beginning then I became very sad, because I knew then that she in some way agreed with it.

[Shane]

I love books that make one want to write. This book is of that kind. It’s deceptively simple in its narrative and prose work. Very easy to read. Gets in and out without much fuss. But if you were to try your hand at writing it yourself, all might crumble. Through a quickly growing oeuvre, Chelosky proves she is adept and nimble at laying bare the embarrassing voice of our youth. Embarrassment here is instruction, ritual, gospel, prayer, and fantasy. In this way, Chelosky’s work will, thankfully, never end.

[arcy]

gorgeous final act

[Codycvlp]

like all the authors work, really good.

[Luz]

been wanting to watch donnie darko and this finally gave me the push to do so