The Events In Order of Loving Someone by Emma Newman-Holden

a review

emma girl writes about sex.

In all its forms: the act, the genders, the appeal. This much, I think, most Substackers already know.

So when I got this book, I saw the cover and read its title and interpreted the ‘events’ to be sex.

I didn’t order the book because I wanted sex, though I’m not a prude. I got it because I find Emma an endlessly fascinating character and writer, a simultaneous poster of (by her own admission) thirst traps and—more importantly—fiction which I regard highly.

I should have known it’d surpass my expectations.

The Events in Order of Loving Someone of course has sex scenes, although I would not describe them as pornographic, nor gratuitous. Each contains the appropriate figurative nuances as to informing us on the dynamics between the subjects, elevating our understanding of the core relationship in the novel and the ‘love’ that opens between them, its particularities in the strand of modern romance.

The relationship and love in question come about via a celebrity dating app, the main character (an aspiring writer) meeting an older rich man who flies her to London to live with him. In relaying their story, the novel is full of beautiful dissections of what makes sex different for men and women, the balance of power involved, and the way some women—like narrator Lily—recognize how to best wield their own.

By the first quarter of the book, Lily worries that she’s signed a metaphorical contract with her lover, Andrew, and entered a sort of prostitution she was unaware of. But what Lily receives from Andrew in turn is of far greater value than anything he trades for her companionship.

Not just unrequited love. But story.

The giving and taking of stories is, for me, the key theme of the book, more than the interplay between the sexes. When I think about this book, I don’t remember the sex scenes; rather, I remember the way Andrew collected stories from party guests; how Lily thinks back on her self-harm; how she deems the story of her parents unworthy of retelling; how she tells Andrew about her near-death experience.

Simply put, for me this novel is not about sex. It’s about stories and their perspectives, their sources, and their subtleties, how we hide bits and parts of them from others and trade them like currency.

emma girl’s greatest and most remarkable strength I’ve found within her short stories on Substack is when she dips outside the perspective of characters like herself and into another. A piece she wrote about the male perspective of a one-sided internet flirtation that ends in an unsolicited dick pic has been stuck in my head for a while now.

It’s no surprise the narrator says to someone at some point:

“I firmly believe that not all fiction an author writes needs to have specifics of truth.”

I agree wholeheartedly. There’s a tangible difference in our world between truth and facts that is too often conflated from both sides, facts as truth and truth as facts. We too often let either get in the way of what fiction is really about—story. And in turn, myth. What is a personal narrative but our own mythologies?

At one point Andrew asks Lily about her parents, a request of which she thinks:

I thought about lying, I thought about telling the truth, I thought about which would be easier, more believable, more interesting.

This is what I think before writing any story of mine, this whole train of thought is really my Substack oeuvre, and to see it so reflected in a novel so cleanly startled me.

It makes me wonder about emma and the fictional Lily, which is which, who is real, what is inspired, what is not, while at the same time reminding me: no, of course, it doesn’t matter.

Consider, for example: In the end, Lily takes Andrew’s life drama—an ulterior love affair with another man as they both lived concurrent heterosexual lives—and unblocks her writer’s block by turning it into a play...in which he, later on, eventually stars in, as—essentially—himself. But...not himself.

Evidence, I think, enough of how the author feels in her relationship with the character Lily.

There are also a lot of descriptions of color in this novel. The narrator seems to observe distinction between shades of colors as a coping mechanism, and to me this prismatic view is the same as the one the author takes of the story in general. Green is not just green: it can be emerald, jade, sage or forest green. Still green, but along a different spectrum.

I read this book in a single afternoon on my back porch. A short book, but in one big gulp, with a couple of beers. That should tell you enough of my enjoyment of it.

A collection of events make a story. Put them in a certain order within the context of a certain someone and you get love.