When Cupid’s arrow is a knife turning in the wound

All This Has Nothing To Do With Me

to someone we don’t know, as well as texts between MS and the unwilling object of her affection, identified only as XX.

Other parts of the book supply backstory: MS tells us about her mother’s bad decisions, starting with a charming Italian jerk, MS’s father, whom she later encounters as an adult. She also recounts her early experiences with the opposite sex, from the seven-year-old boy in red swimming trunks she met on holiday as a six-year-old to her relationship with her stepfather.

Its pages peppered with images of scooters, lighters and cigarette butts, All This Has Nothing To Do With Me is a little hard to get into at first. It’s not the kind of book that tries to charm from the first page. “The first section of our analysis will focus upon the patho- logical phenomenon ‘blind love’,” is hardly the most captivating opening line in the history of literature. If you stick it out past the first 20 pages, though, you’ll find that it’s worth the effort.

What makes this book work as a raw dissection of heartbreak is Sabolo’s writing: distant, often unemotional, observational and witty. MS is the guinea pig in her own lab. It’s hard not to cringe when reading her letter to Facebook, asking if the site’s administrators can tell her who’s been viewing her profile (because she wants to see if XX has been stalking her page).

Unrequited love is so consuming that the quest to win someone over becomes an obsession, followed by a second obsession about why you couldn’t. Obsessions captured painfully and perfectly by this strange little book. —