The narrator of poet Catherine Jenkins’ first novel, a self-proclaimed love addict – “I want love and so I make love happen and so I am vulnerable and restless” – finds solace on a beach in Costa Rica. There the ebb and flow of the ocean become both backdrop and catalyst for her musings and memories of past lovers.

Unfortunately, few of these remembered relationships are particularly pleasant. The narrative quickly devolves into a diary-like litany of physically and emotionally abusive partners, and various brushes with despair. An AIDS scare, an abortion, moments of suicidal depression – all become fodder for venting and sense-making. The emotional baldness and immediacy of Jenkins’ prose is moving in places, and there is a voyeuristic page-turning quality to the story, but the confessional mode is not well served by some of the storytelling strategies.

The novel’s loose, stream-of-consciousness structure is divided into chapters introduced by riffs on fish and their eating, mating, and hunting habits. The links between the living habits of the assorted sea creatures and the narrator’s loving habits are obvious, but they lend little in the way of elucidation of character or motive and often feel forced.

The narrator also chooses to designate all of the men in her life as“you.” By the denouement, the series of unnamed “you”s have melded together into one nightmare of a romantic partner. It may be the intention of “I” to rob her past lovers of their power by refusing them particulars, but the process drains them of some of their blood and substance. The best moments here come when Jenkins leaves devices behind for straight-up depictions of heart-wrenching scenes.

The reality of emotions, especially when it comes to messy love affairs, is that they are sloppy, relentless, and clichéd. The tricky task for the writer is to evoke these states without whitewashing or overarticulating them. Jenkins does not succeed often enough in this task.