Proximity

by Sam Heaps

This book contains 94 letters to a man named A. Each one introduces a new sexual partner, and asks a new question about our relationship to desire. Through the author’s interrogation of their affair with A, a married writer expecting his first child, this book also explores the role systemic forces play in our most intimate power structures. Using unabashed language around the body these fragments explore violence, morality, euphoria, and the inevitable shame that dogs human desire.

Genres: Fiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 17, 2023

Reviews

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Proximity is equally erotic and horrifying--a reminder of the control we surrender by falling in love. This debut will pulverize you.

[Aimee Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heaps opens the door to the narrator’s life and invites you inside. This stream of consciousness doesn’t just show the paintings on the wall, the polished silverware, the dining room for guests…it invites you to view the cluttered broom closet, the toilet that hasn’t been scrubbed for over a week, the pantry full of expired goods. I was completely enamored by the honesty of this narrator. What a relief to read a book that doesn’t blame others for their error, but presents a narrator who simply lives life as they know best/how and with arms wide open.

There are so many moments that spoke to me, but I’ll just include a couple here. “Don’t you know, it wouldn’t have happened if you didn’t deserve it. We are all being punished for sins we committed in a past life.” I’m constantly reviewing my sins, wondering what karmic actions I’ve caused for myself and others. The relationships in this book make your heart scream, sometimes because you’ve been there and other times because you don’t want anyone to be there.

My favorite essay begins: “I am in proximity. I am in close proximity.” It really made me ruminate on the people who are on the periphery of our lives. The orbiting planets that never quite come into contact. Yet how much harm, or safety, those strangers can cause us indirectly.

“It is eternally irritating to me, the pain I endure for men’s pleasure. When they complain to me about their knees, or their backs, or their fingers.

If I complained we would get nothing done.”

I often find myself rise to temper…how quick I am to complain about others for not handling their pain when mine seems insurmountable. Men complaining about a paper cut, or soggy socks, or even a mild nuisance such as traffic. Heaps articulates the reality of life that most shy away from. The truth, rather than the glossed over finish. So many situations, thoughts, and feelings relatable…I’ll be returning to Proximity for many years to come for the understanding it offers.

[Bryen Fabry Dorsam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bruising debut - this book leaves a mark. Throughout, Heaps casts ‘you’ in a number of different roles, making the reader complicit in all of the various affections, betrayals, and complications they render so affectingly. Their use of the second person makes many of these scenes even more harrowing - though the reader knows that ‘you’ is certainly someone else, one can’t escape the grammatical implication that ‘you’ yourself have a part to play. In this way, what could be incompletely described as ‘confessional’ is more truthfully universal - an invitation to reflect on one’s own relationships and the many roles we each play in the lives of those we love, or claim to love. Proximity is a harsh, necessary, and strikingly visceral lesson in culpability.

[Seth Katz · Rating 5 out of 5]

A shattering, twisting, gorgeous read. This is not an erotic or sensual beach read. This is the captured experience of what is REAL. And the reality is intimate in a more painful way. Trigger warnings for sexual violence and body horror-esque descriptions, but that I believe are vital to expressing what love, sex, and intimacy often really look and feel like for many of us. Heaps digs into themself and offers us the not-so-shiny parts of themself. As a reader, this experience allowed me to reflect on my own relationships to body, sex, love addiction, connection, codependency, intimacy... which I believe is part of the artistry of this book.

[BRIAN JEROME · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erotic, but not all in the sense of sexuality. The tender beauty of romance mixed with the unapologetic primal desire of the want to be wanted and the need to seen, uniquely represents all too much of what it is to be and to feel. As a guided voyeur, one can only ask themselves why they are so closeted with secrets and stories from loves past; to bury them down and to never share with others. Heaps remarkably uses her writing with great courage to reclaim the brutality of loss and unrequited love, pain and bliss, desire and need.

Recommended to understand the human condition.

[Joanna Theiss · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of book that requires the reader to let go. Let go of judgment about what form a memoir is supposed to take, what subjects and experiences are supposed to be off-limits, what a writer is allowed to say about sex and love. Because the writing is so gorgeous and poetic, even the frequent moments of pain, loss, degradation, humiliation are rendered gorgeous and poetic, too. The adjective "gripping" is probably overused, but once I started it, I was incapable of stopping.

[dani · Rating 4 out of 5]

thank you clash for the arc, always eternally grateful for you.

to start, this novel was completely real and drenched in every emotion possible. it was written in a way that spoke to the reader as it was completely immersive and i felt myself on the pages as i read the author’s experience and the emotions each one warranted. absolutely beautiful and a wonderful piece of work.

[Parker Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

A memory palace built to be burned down. The sex in this book is uncompromising in its complexity, but the real thrill for me was the sense of getting lost in biographical time — Heaps has an uncanny gift for bending time so that going back feels like moving forward. Compelling, unsettling, brilliant.

[Dan Zubrzycki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly evocative, challenging, and vulnerable. Sam puts to words the feral, shattered, and beautifully whole emotions. In a muscular way, this book is refreshing - no saccharine platitudes, just the reality of deeply painful love and heartbreak, vulnerability and anger and so much more.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heaps has spent a lifetime leaning into emotions in their furthest, deepest forms, and so extreme humanity seeps out from between the letters, the words, the paragraphs and the pages. This book encapsulates, in singular prose, the incredible ache of being alive.

[Maxwell Minka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I didn't know I needed to read this book. I didn't know what I was getting into when I ordered it to support a past friend. But WOW! Thanks Sam for writing such an intimate book. So much said in this book that is familiar to my experience and didn't know the words to say.

[Josh Dale · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poetic journey of international proportions, Proximity is an intimate love letter unlike any other. Heaps understands, yet questions often, how the subject of one’s desire can exist with and without them. Very raw, yet net unhinged.

[K. Albasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part break up letter, part horror story, Proximity is a literary memoir told in vignettes of love, sex, assault, manipulation, and other intimate traumas. It's at times hard to read yet hard to put down. Heaps' writing is succinct and vivid, effortlessly shifting between their past selves and present reflections. An unflinching work that will leave an impression long after the last page.