I'm F*cking Amazing

January 22, 2024
Playwright Warden debuts with a brutally honest if overlong account of a 30-something woman’s sex life in London. After the unnamed narrator’s parents separated and her mother moved to San Francisco, she came up with an equation to have a successful relationship and believes that marriage with children has a zero percent success rate. Her third “proper” relationship—with Three, a man she met while bartending at 24—follows all of the expected patterns until sex with him becomes physically painful. No matter what they try, the narrator has trouble getting aroused, and she begins to dread sex. After multiple doctor appointments and physiotherapy, the problem is still not resolved and she begins to look for alternative aphrodisiacs, such as flirting with strangers and snorting cocaine. As the years pass with Three she worries about the consequences of breaking her own rules. Though there are flashes of stylistic flair, such as recurring pages of scorecard-like “Top Humps,” in which the narrator rates her former lovers on “general vibe” and other factors, too often Warden’s prose reads like run-on journal entries (“Three was the best male person I had ever come across. EVER. And all my bits worked with his bits very well in a very exciting manner”), and the frankness rarely leads to deep insights. Fleabag this is not. Agent: Laura Bonner, WME.