Nicola Dinan’s 2023 debut novel, Bellies, has become something of a cult favourite in its short life, and it recently won the Polari First Book Prize. If Bellies was all about figuring out who you are in your 20s, Dinan’s latest novel, Disappoint Me, is more about the cold-water shock of entering your 30s and realising it’s time to grow up, get a serious job and grab a partner before the music stops.
The book opens with Max, a trans woman who is also a disillusioned poet and legal consultant for a tech company. Having passed the landmark age of 30 and split up with Arthur, she is now staring into the terrifying abyss of adulthood. When she meets Vincent, a successful corporate lawyer who has effortlessly entered conventional adulthood, the pair hit it off in a quiet, no-fireworks way. But Dinan knows that smooth stories don’t make for great novels and so she uses an intriguing backstory to release secrets and tension into her narrative.
Dinan grew up in Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur and now lives in London. She also trained as a lawyer before turning to writing and you can feel the precision of that training in the exactitude of her language, which adds to the pleasure of this book. There are lots of acidly observed one-liners, too, that made me guffaw – when Max wakes up in a hospital room, her first question is not “where am I?” or even “what happened?” but “how did I get [a hospital room] to myself?”
Dinan is also excellent on the often anti-erotic experience of modern dating – “Dates often feel like something one should do, like replacing a Brita filter”. But the quips serve a dual purpose; after the laughs subside, the reader is left with a heavy understanding of just how difficult life for young millennials and Gen Zs can be.
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This is a strikingly contemporary novel, with details like “she/they mullets” and drug references you have to google. It also offers much-needed insight into what it is to be trans. Dinan’s ability to present genuinely thought-provoking riffs on gender, race and identity without becoming didactic is truly impressive. But, as with Bellies, Disappoint Me is first and foremost a love story about complex and real characters with whom you become deeply involved. It absolutely does not disappoint.
Edel Coffey’s latest novel is In Her Place
