Notice (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

I read this book a year ago, while on vacation. It was the first book I had read practically uninterruptedly in a long time ; it captured my attention, stayed on my mind when i wasn't reading it and, oddly, when I finished it I chose to leave it behind as part of the book collection of my vacation site. I say "oddly" because the book has never left my mind. I think that it was such a powerful depiction of a life - an incredibly pained life - that I had to get away from it for a while, but I never forgot it. I never felt the need to know more about her background, what her parents did to her, all the "peripherals" seems insignificant as to what was going in inside the girl. As previous readers have noted, it is *extremely* raw. Yes, it is explicit, and sexual, and graphic, but all of that is secondary to the absolute clarity with which the main character expresses herself. It is as if she is watching herself from outside her body, and is never lying about what she sees, no matter how difficult or painful or "ugly" her reality is.It takes an incredible courage to write something that is so sharp, and cutting. It is indeed a hard book to read, but if you are interested in how different minds work, how people experience their own life - regardless of how different it is from yours - then this book is a real gem. One year after closing the last page, I am going to get another copy - this time to keep.

Though this book is not for the weak hearted or the virgin eared it is one of the most profound reads available. Heather Lewis really probes the human psyche to bring the motivation of her main character into view. She displays incredible astuteness in the maze of human sexuality and emotions. With a level of suspense that you find overwhelming as you unravel the plot. My favorite excerpt:"I'd promised myself. My life may have looked haphazzard and I suppose a lot of it was, but I'd kept this one piece very well ordered....Had tried to make it just about sex.....until the feelings themselves overlapped and tangeld up, impossible to distinguish, or stop, or recover from. These were the feelings that had made it necessary to stop feeling in the first place- to stop all of them. Or at least dull them, blunt them. Find so many ways around them, to never allow them. To keep myself especially far from love, and even farther from being loved because, of the whole lot of them, these were the only two that could actually kill you."

This is unquestionably the most disturbing book I have ever read. I tend to think I deal with disturbing subject matter very well, but this book messed me up for days. It's revolting. I don't mean that it's badly written, or even that it's not worth reading, but you better know what you're getting into before you read it. If you can't deal with *extremely* graphic sexual violence, or you don't want to read about a girl on an absolutely relentless path of self-destruction, don't read this.

This was actually the second of three books that Heather Lewis wrote, as I understand it. This one was published last, and posthumously. After reading the book, it's no surprise that the author died at her own hand.This book is hard to read. It was hard to read the actual narrative, but that was almost cursory and not nearly as interesting as her ability to write from the perspective of her character. This is the best account of an internal struggle with dissociation I have read. Her style is so straightforward.I finished the book in a day and haven't been able to get it out of my mind since. It's gorgeous.

Instead of giving a play-by-play of "Notice," I'll just point out a few reasons why "Notice" is superior to other books that address similar topics. Like...say..."Push."I think the main thing that made this story so difficult and effective for me was the narrator's detached and unaffected (?) presentation. There's something about the fact that she all along goes unnamed and we never get many details about her parents' special brand of terrible (the terrible that lands her where we find her at the novel's open) that creates in the reader a sort of desperate longing to know and protect her.Then too, there's something in the way the unnamed narrator presents her horrific story. Even when she seems to get that what's happening to her is terrible, she never seems to get that what's happening to her is terrible. She distrusts, but then she ultimately reaches out and tries. And when she's hurt (no, brutalized) she tends to remain rather matter-of-fact. (And like many of the brutalized, she seems never to judge her brutalizers too harshly). I'm not sure how a character can be dry and matter-of-fact while at the same time expressing hurt beyond that which is commonly experienced, but this character manages to do it. And that makes the reader cry repeatedly.This is a horrific and brutal topic. And Lewis handles it masterfully. I don't usually get all mushy and emotional over pain on top of hurt on top of pain on top of hurt. But I got all mushy and emotional over "Notice." And that says something about the skill with which this story is told.

There are some people who describe this book as the most disturbing thing they have ever read. Well, that really depends where you are coming from when you approach that word. This is a thought provoking book for sure, but hardly disturbing. The subject matter itself is not particularly shocking at all. It is the kind of thing which happens every day really. Its unfortunate and distressing but not disturbing.This is basically an autobiography in novel form. Heather was not a happy woman at all. A recovering addict, a victim of everything she wrote about, a voice crying out for an ear to hear. She writes this in a dispassionate way, like she is looking in on her own life. The "Notice" of the title is repeated constantly throughout the novel by "Nina" from within her head. She notices this, she is noticed by him, by her. She notices herself. She refuses to notice herself etc.Nina gets involved in the sex trade. She does not know why. She is abused. She does not know why. She is attacked. She does not know why. She falls in love with her therapist. She does not know why. This relationship with her therapist takes up a huge chunk of this book but is ultimately unsatisfying. Its all about moments in time, being "noticed" or not "noticed".I think this book explains why Heather Lewis took her own life before this ever got published. It is a story of submissive rejection. It is a very sad book, but not a disturbing one. The kind of interaction described in this book is part of the human condition. There are bad people out there, and there are lost people out there, yearning to to be "noticed" yearning for acceptance, for understanding.There is nothing new written within these pages. Even the Queer community should not hold this up as some kind of flag fluttering in the wind of misunderstanding. This is Heather's own story, written as a metaphor to reflect her thoughts.It is not disturbing. It is strangely ordinary in an oxymoronic way. It is well worth reading though, but only as a mirror to reflect ones own life back and to understand the implications of jumping, or being pushed, into the abyss.

This book and its writing is so hard to read...not because of the graphic details (wasnt that graphic her writing is terrible) but because of the grammar it was jarring and didn't have a flow it was grammatically hard to read.I gave up reading half way through because I had to keep going back to reread the same sentence that made no sense at all! Sad...I had paid good money and waited such a long time because if the reviews and its such a disappointing flawed book.

I read a lot about this book before buying it and it made me want to read it even more...I was slightly disappointed with the storyline and found it a little confusing in parts,it didn't have me gripped to a book like I want to be when reading...I can not say that I don't recommend it because others might fell different about it?