I'm A Fan by Sheena Patel - Review

I kept seeing this book earlier in the year when I had vouchers to spend, and I so nearly picked it up more than once, but for some reason I didn't. Then it was 99p on Kindle so I bought it, and I finally read it a couple of weeks ago. I'm glad I didn't pay full price for it, but I did like it. I think basically this book isn't for me, in my life stage - and that's okay. 

It is a novella, it isn't told linearly, and it's more little vignettes of life than actually a narrative. The heroine is never named, but she is a woman of colour and seems to be youngish, maybe thirty at most. She has been in an on off thing with the man she calls 'the man I want to be with'. She never names him. He's older than her, he seems to be in a position of some power over her, and he is married. He has been married for more than two decades and proclaims to not be in love with her, but says he can't leave her. Our heroine knows her name and has even bumped into her on occasion, but she is obsessed with another woman that the man she wants to be with has been seeing.

She even calls her 'the woman I am obsessed with'. She spends hours refreshing her instagram, and seems to think that she isn't sufficiently happy with the man (who is quite a terrible man). There are also parts where she rails against racism, sexism, colonialism, and so on. I liked these bits but I thought they were a bit jarring in the whole. 

I do think this is a very literary book and I'm glad I read it, even if I didn't love it. I am still giving it four out of five because I'm glad it exists.