Clinical Intimacy by Ewan Gass
Ewan Gass's debut novel is a masterclass in storytelling, exploring one man through a series of interviews with people close to him, building a portrait of his character through negative space
Ewan Gass’s debut novel Clinical Intimacy explores the life of one man through a patchwork of relationships. In interviews with each of these relationships – friends, lovers, clients and his immediate family – a picture of this unseen individual forms. ‘S’, as this character is referred to, is the subject of each interviewee’s reflections but is never granted a voice himself; the tangle of first-person speeches all outlining this man while working to simultaneously reveal the speaker themselves.
This unusual structure may at first seem daunting. A small diagram is helpfully provided to help track the different participants, all anonymous, but each voice has a distinctive signature as they paint themselves into fullness almost inadvertently. What follows is a fascinating dive into what manipulation and crucially, care, can be. As ‘S’ moves through relationships, he is driven by his ability to decode what people need: ‘Every person has a question they are dying to be asked.’ As he interacts with the world his actions can be viewed by turn as exploitative or caring, manipulative and tender. We are offered every perspective on a man but his own, leaving the ultimate judgement open-ended, in ways that justice in the courts often isn’t.
