There was something very menacing and sinister about this book, which I loved. It captured the perverse way some people are forced to make their living, and described an underworld of night-time working that many people know nothing about.

Ahh this novel is thoroughly mad and original! I loved it from the start and was swept up in the claustrophobic relationship. It put me on edge though - bringing back some memories and emotional states that I would rather forget!

This was a great read and I loved the crazy story of obsession. My favourite type of story. A real and realistic story. Highly recommended xx

This is a story about obsession. And not always in a good way. Meggie is only just ticking along in her life. Just about keeping her head above water. Until the day she meets Sabine and sees in her the woman she wants to be. Initially the mirroring is slight but when Sabine changes her shift at work to permanent nights, Meggie has to do the same to the detriment of everything else currently in her life - steady boyfriend included. As Meggie slowly starts to spiral downwards into her obsession her life starts to cave in and we start to see the hold Sabine has strengthen, even though her own behaviour starts to flounder...
This is a story best gone in with as little preconception as possible. It underlies how strong obsession can be - both on a friendship plane and also relationship-wise. It details how unhealthy this can be and for what reasons. It's almost co-dependent in nature and I did feel for Meggie and how it was all affecting her. Especially when more of the truth of things came out.
It's also a story about nightime London and the world the nocturnal people inhabit. That part is also quite fascinating. As is the job that the two main characters do. Who knew that was a thing?!
It's a dark book but never depressing. There's moments of hope and humour peppered throughout to balance out the often futile relationship between Sabine and Meggie.
All in all, an interesting and compelling read that held my attention nicely and made a refreshing change from my usual genre read.
My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

Not for me. I like fiction with a distinctive voice. This reads more like journalism than fiction, lots of 'telling' and workaday prose. DNF

In Y2K London, Meggie meets the enigmatic, exotic Sabine at her dead end job. After an initial spark of friendship, they both swap to the night shift and the embers of their relationship slowly grow into a flame.

This is a hypnotic story about identity, sex, and obsession. Interestingly, the reader is not so much fascinated by Sabine but by Meggie’s fascination with Sabine, who she attempts to shoe-horn into the role of best friend, lover, confidante, and becomes a cipher for everything Meggie feels is missing in her life.

The writing perfectly captures both the febrile, slightly fuzzy nature of a nocturnal life and the city of London at the turn of the twentieth century: a series of sticky nightclubs, upmarket but empty streets, alleyways with bins overflowing, and greasy spoon cafes. Despite her treasured gang of night shift friends, Meggie is usually on the outside looking in, a flaneur, sweeping the reader along and making the book an absorbing, speedy read, leaving you feeling a little grubby by the end.

The premise of this book really interested me and the book lived up to all of my expectations. The story is told in such a heartfelt and honest way, which hooks you immediately for the ride and only gently puts you down right at the end,
The story is supported by central and incidental characters who are just so detailed and interesting, who underpin the evolving story with real vigour and humanity, told by a natural author really skilfully. I loved how the story just seemed to flow, with music referencing & interspersing throughout, as the characters came to life.
The story never sits still, but fidgets and vibrates with life with moments of the story really resonating with me. There is one scene that is genuinely so vivid and told with such veracity and venom, that I'm still thinking about it the next day.
Very, very good.

I was super excited to read this novel given its compelling synopsis, but unfortunately it didn't end up working for me. On a sentence-by-sentence level the writing was fine, but I found that I just got impatient with this novel. The characters felt too gimmicky--too much like Fictional Characters and not enough like actual people--and the dialogue felt jarring, so much so that it kept pulling me out of the story. I also didn't feel invested in where the story was going, as I didn't understand the main character's decisions, nor her obsession with the other main female character in this novel. Overall a novel that could've been promising, but that didn't end up panning out for me.

A perfect novella that I have now read twice, both in one sitting. Perfect for fans of Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Sally Rooney's Conversations With Friends and Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan, this is a sharp and sharply observed coming-of-age story about youth, naivety and sexual discovery, with a perfect spattering of self-discovery and self-abandon.

It follows narrator Meggie, bored with her job as a temp in a newspaper clippings office and with her long-term boyfriend, who is as increasingly keen to commit to her as she is to detatch herself from him. When she meets the enigmatic, freespirited, confident Sabine at work, Meggie becomes obsessed with attaining her new colleague's friendship.

Like Moshfegh's counterpart, Meggie spirals out of control as she rejects the societal expectations that bring stability, adapting her lifestyle to accomodate her growing obsession with this mysterious woman. Sure to be one of my highlights for 2021.

A compulsive and unsettling read following a protagonist, Meggie, who becomes enthralled with a co-worker, Sabine, to the point where she changes job and her lifestyle to fit around her. To an extent, I do feel that the blurb was slightly misleading.

Whilst the relationship and slight obsession with Sabine is a catalyst for the book, I felt that it was more about Meggie trying to navigate an unfamiliar world and struggling to distinguish what is/isn't reasonable and how far she should be pushing the boundaries of comfort in order to be perceived as 'interesting'.

There was a feeling of discomfort and impending doom whilst reading this book but this tension added to the enjoyment of it. This discomfort was so visceral I could easily see it becoming a film.

Needs a trigger warning for sexual violence and hard drug use. I felt it was not gratuitous or unnecessary, as it drove the plot forward, but definitely could be upsetting for some readers.

The author of this book has said of the moment that she heard from her agent (fully prepared to be given disappointing news) that Picador wanted to buy the book “I swear I slipped into another reality – someone else’s life”.

And that is a very appropriate response as this book – a psychological examination of obsession, desire, self-annihilating hedonism, storytelling and nocturnal urban existence - has at its heart a character who wants to slip into the life of another.

The first party narrator of the book is Meggie – looking back some twenty years later on a formative encounter that happened in her early 20s, around the turn of the Millenium. Meggie, a South African living in London, is studying literature while working in a press cutting agency, and in a relationship with the real hero of the story – Graham, a patient if safe boyfriend who wants her to move in with him.

At her job she meets a Belgian Sabine. The enigmatic Sabine – at the same time distant and unknowable and yet familiar to everyone (albeit with a slightly different nickname and perceived persona) – is on one level (perhaps most of all on the level of Meggie’s imagination of Sabine’s life) exactly what Meggie feels she is missing in her own life.

And when Sabine shifts to the nighshift, preparing cuttings from the next day’s papers, the increasingly intoxicated Meggie joins her and enters with her a shadowy and liminal land often fuelled by literal toxins.

She becomes more and more obsessed with Sabine – or again I would say of the stories that Sabine has woven around herself, stories that Meggie fleshes out and develops herself. At one point she says:

"When we were together, I kept my obsession in check – but apart, I indulged it. Not that anybody would have guessed. I didn’t talk about Sabine incessantly; I didn’t talk about her at all. Instead, I discreetly tried to be as much like her as I could. The changes were subtle, hidden behind my skin. She was there in the way I held myself, the way my muscles arranged my face, the relaxation of my vocal cords into their softest, lowest drawl."

Which is only not true given that it seems to the reader that everyone is aware of her obsession – Graham in particular even early on warning her that her relationship with Sabine is obsessive and threatening their own relationship – something Meggie only really recognises looking back.

"Often I am kept awake by guilt. Yet when I truly go back into the past my perspective shifts. As I write the story down, I can see that when I tried to do what I thought I should, my attempts were doomed. How do you treat others decently when you want to become someone else? How do you live well when you yearn to burn with all your spirit in moments of wildness or freedom or excess?"

As the story progresses it takes a darker and more complex turn, as Maxine finds out more about Sabine via her family, and realises how easy a seemingly ultra-connected life in London can be cast adrift and fade into a shocking level of anonimity.

The author has commented in a way which captures the story well.

"Obsession with another person, in the sense of wanting to be them, is about the infinite appeal of the other, the mystery of the other – but it is also about wanting to escape the self, there’s a nihilistic element to it. Obsession more generally allows you to lose yourself. Urban existence allows for this too. In a city like London, you can have anonymity. You can be who you want to be, you can explore who you are. There is an exhilarating side to such freedom but also danger. Nightshift is set at the end of the twentieth century when social media was not yet a thing – but even now, particularly as a foreigner, a migrant, in two steps you can be off the grid, you can disappear, you can die".

Overall this is a striking tale, albeit perhaps a little too dark at times for my tastes.

This debut is a captivating tale of obsession at the juncture between friendship and desire. ⁣
⁣
Meggie is an unremarkable 23 year old whose dull office job is illuminated by the appearance of a new colleague, the manic pixie dream girl Sabine. Sabine is capricious, unreliable and distant - she is the destructive force that Meggie wishes for herself but is unable to unleash. Sabine provides Meggie with a means to externalise her hidden ugliness.⁣
⁣
What begins as fascination quickly spirals into a consuming obsession. Meggie upends her life for Sabine: she empties her overdraft, leaves her doting boyfriend, and works the night shift in Victoria to be around Sabine. She wants Sabine, wants to be Sabine, and perhaps without realising it also wants to destroy Sabine. In the noir absurdity of the nocturnal, these boundaries dissipate. Friendship, desire and transference fuse into an intoxicating, devastating force that engulfs both women. ⁣

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is the story of Maggie who meets Sabine in her daytime job. Meggie quickly becomes obsessed with Sabine so much so that when Sabine transfers to a different department to work nights Maggie does the same. This is a story of obsession, exploring sexuality and how life can quickly spiral out of control.

This book was not what I expected. I thought that there would be a bit more mystery in the story. I found it a bit repetitive and didn’t always keep my attention. The parts that I loved most were when she was at work and how she coped with her insomnia. I am sure that a lot of people will really enjoy this but it just wasn’t for me.i

A tale of obsessive love in London at the turn of the millennium. When Meggie meets Sabine, she's never seen anyone sparkle quite as bright and what starts as a need for her friendship, soon becomes a desire to entirely encapsulate her. An interesting read.

Self-discovery in a liminal world

With a steady boyfriend, office job and university studies, so far in Meggie’s 23 years, she has played it safe. Yet, no matter how hard she tries, she can never please her overbearing mother, and she is beginning to question whether this is the life she wants. When she meets the unconventional and enigmatic Sabine, it is a chance to break free. Sabine appears to be everything Meggie wants to be, an unrestrained agent of her own destiny.

Set in the liminal world of nocturnal London, nightshift takes us on a journey of obsession, self-destruction, -reconstruction and -discovery. It explores the boundaries of sexuality, identity, and friendship, and the myths we weave around the self and others.

An absorbing, disturbing and moving debut.

My thanks to NetGalley and publisher, Pan Macmillan for the ARC.

At the start of this book - some 20 years after the events - Meggie is reflecting on her life in her 20s . She is writing about these events in what may be a therapeutic way. At 23 her life was not really going anywhere particularly. And then she looks up from her desk one day and sees a new and enigmatic co-worker, Sabine. She becomes intrigued with Sabine and then things deepen. She starts to change her life in order to be more like, and closer to, Sabine.

The story then follows Meggie's life. The gradual change in her is so well done. As it would be in someone going through this, some of the changes are almost imperceptible. Thinking back over the book it almost sends a shiver down my spine. For me the book was highly readable and drew me steadily in. The question is "Is she really freeing herself from her previous life or not?".

Meggie does change. Her interactions with fellow workers, those close to her, simple acquaintances and Sabine alter as time passes. As you read this it is only obvious to a point. When you look back on it you get a sense of just how much change there is. I found this both intriguing and in some ways dificult. Watching the consequences of Meggie's life spiralling out of control is disconcerting or worse. The fact that I can say that simply shows how well this is written I guess. It's worth bearing in mind that this may be a challenging read for some people. The combination of Meggie's mental state with drugs, sex and alcohol may make some people uncomfortable. I found it managed to feel deeply personal and real while almost being casual.

The ending was good for me and it left some questions about the whole subject of obsession. I'd like to read more from this author.

Do we ever really get over obsession?

Nightshift is a novel about obsession and chasing a life that might not really exist. Meggie has a humdrum day job in an office, a boyfriend who wants to move in together, and is trying to do a literature degree, but when she meets mysterious Sabine at work, she starts to want something else. Changing her hours to the night shift as Sabine does, Meggie tries to adjust to the new world, with a different set of coworkers and a chance to get closer to Sabine, but will she find herself or keep losing things?

Ladner puts a slightly different spin on the 'female obsession that may or may not be friendship and/or sexual' story, using the concept of the night shift, a slightly otherworldly London, and two main characters not from England. The novel, though short, moves through different phases, from Meggie's initial need to get closer to distant Sabine, then throwing away elements of her past life, and then what happens as Meggie tries to live this new night life. There's a vague framing device looking back with hindsight which brings the conclusion to the book, but doesn't answer every question, which suits the narrative's style. The atmosphere created works well, at times drug-fuelled and occasionally moving quickly over some of the more self-destructive moments, but with a lingering melancholy especially by the ending.

What let down the book a bit for me was the fact it was very predictable and felt too similar to other books in which a young woman becomes obsessed with another woman. It was refreshing that Nightshift went further to explore sexuality and Meggie's attraction to Sabine, as often that element is left unspoken or as something that awkwardly comes up once and is then passed over, but the general narrative arc felt all too expected and a lot of the later 'revelations' about Sabine just felt like staples of the subgenre.

An enjoyable short read with a dark current underneath, Nightshift is another voice in the conversation about female friendship, sexuality, and obsession, but doesn't really add anything new to it. There's some interesting thoughts to be had around the way it presents London as the setting for the story, with different areas suggesting different things, and it's a novel that'll probably appeal most to people who like both the obsession element and novels that comment on London itself.

In the first year of my creative writing undergraduate Kiare Ladner was a PhD student who taught some of my lessons.

She was an excellent teacher with a clear passion for writing, and she even went so far as to show us excerpts from stories she was working on at the time.

Her first book 'Nighshift,' a tale of dangerous obsession and longing, demonstrates both Kiare's phenomenal ability to write and her passion for it.

This book has been expertly crafted to tell a story which we can all relate to.

At it's core, it's about admiring other people, wanting to be them.

But what happens when admiration becomes obsession and this obsession slowly begins to slowly destroy you?

What happens when you're in a compulsive pursuit of something you can't obtain?

This is a really enjoyable, at times very sad novel, which explores the dangerous nature of longing, loneliness and desire to leave your own life behind.

Thoroughly recommended.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Picador for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

Upon requesting this book, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had read the description but I couldn’t have imagined what it was actually about. Psychosexual obsession. Drugs. Coming of age. All possible things to summarise this book.

I found Meggie’s character really interested as she navigated her life knowing Sabine, how Sabine changed, improved yet also ruined her life and how this would have a profound effect on Meggie as her life would develop. I think this book was kind of like those sad books that never end the way you expect it too. It never quite seems like the story is complete but in a good way. We’ll never know if that was actually Sabine by the bin eating a pastry. We’ll never know what happened to her surf school and her girlfriend in the Caman Islands. I loved that Meggie got to meet Xavier and debunk the myths surrounding Sabine.

This book was sad in the fact that it really highlights that some people, no matter how charismatic, no matter how happy they seem, lead incredibly sad lives. It’s all for the show. And they drag people with them. The fact Sabine died in her flat, and was left rotting for seven months, is both terrifying and heartbreaking. This will be reviewed on goodreads soon.

<i>"How do you treat others decently when you want to become someone else? How do you live well when you yearn to burn with all your spirit in moments of wildness or freedom or excess?"</i>

“Nightshift” is a brave, risky novel about obsession and desire - the desire to escape, create, begin anew. And tied into that is the desire to disappear, to annihilate oneself. It almost read as a thriller to me - I read it in nearly one sitting, filled with dread and fearful anticipation about what might happen next.

<i>"Why was it such a great thing to respect yourself? If you let go of vapid ideas like that, of that kind of preciousness, you could explore so much else. If you just swept your precious self out of the way a bit."</i>

The story follows twenty-three-year-old Meggie, at the turn of the century, Meggie’s life is fairly humdrum and unremarkable, but lurking within her is a secret wish. <i>"There were times,”</i> she whispers, <i>“when a small, unexpressed part of me yearned for another kind of life, to be another person, even."</i> This wish has the chance to manifest itself via her growing obsession with her co-worker (and eventual friend) Sabine.

<i> "The moment I gave in to my craving for her, everything changed... Tired of the rooms in my own dreary house, done with measly alterations, I let go, the house burned down, and it felt good."</i>

Everything about Sabine is appealing to to Meggie. Studying literature after a failed law degree, with a nice cozy boyfriend who gives her a sheep pendant from Wales as a present, Meggie sees (or projects…) a path towards liberation in Sabine. <i>"Trapped in a life I hadn’t quite intended,"</i> she fears, <i>"I’d never be able to change, to know myself beyond the stencil of what my upbringing had created."</i> So we have a friendship dynamic similar to the one set up in Ferrante - one outgoing friend, one more subdued - but with a much darker twist. Her behaviour grows more and more Tom Ripley-ish, most memorably in her treatment of a photograph of Sabine. To her, Sabrine is free, fanciful, <i>"a brave heroine in a dark fairytale"</i> (fairytales are mentioned often throughout the book). <i>"I was awed by her ability to be herself," </i> Meggie says,<i> "- unconventional, uninhibited - where I’d never had the courage to do the same."</i>

Slowly but surely, she gets to know Sabine better - Sabine goes by different names with different peoples, is unreliable and spontaneous. <i>"She was the naughty little girl I’d always wanted to know. The girl I’d been discouraged from inviting home. A sexualised child." </i> The atmosphere is heightened by the nightshifts they work together, days that blur into each other, thirty hours without sleeping, evenings full of eccentric and off-beat characters, more people for Meggie to envy. <i>"I wished I’d been a gang leader or a goth,"</i> she sighs, <i>"But how would my mother have coped?”</i> Their nightshifts are full pot noodles, “see you laters” instead of see you tomorrow, and eventually, the darker, more excessive side of a nighttime existence. Meggie begins imitating Sabine more than ever. And then, she comes to a decision. <i>"What I needed,"</i> she declares, <i>"was to push against myself."</i>

That’s when the novel enters Andrés Caicedo-Cat Marnell-Mary Gaitskill territory, and I was DOWN with it. I’m not going to go into specifics here, because one of the dark pleasures (“pleasure” is not exactly the right word, but anyway...) of the novel is seeing where Meggie goes, what she does. And what is done to her. As Meggie puts it: <i>"As an outsider, I’d always found refuge in reading. But as Sabine and I grew closer, I didn’t need it. My outsider’s life began to feel extraordinary. I didn’t want to read about characters, I wanted to be them. I didn’t want to read about adventures, I wanted to have them.”</i>

But will there be consequences to Meggie’s decisions? Who IS Sabine, really? One of the more fascinating tropes of the novel to me is the idea of Sabine/Meggie as writers, fiction teller, creators of fantasies. Who is the better writer/creator, Meggie or Sabine? What are the risks/consequences of being someone is really GOOD at inventing/living in fantasies?

Another one of the key images in the novel for me was the description of a beautiful shell found on a beach, that eventually stinks up the bedroom, due to the creature rotting inside it Is narrator a psychosexual obsessive? Is Sabine just “fucked up” (as one character puts it)? These simple psychological terms feel like a failure in language; this isn’t a simple, straightforward psycho thriller. Instead (especially in the last 25% of the book, which was the strongest part for me), the book becomes more about the theme of obliteration - how to disappear, getting lost. How do you change? How do you escape? And what are the consequences of doing so?

A strikingly memorable and provocative read.