Chloe’s Top 3 Reads for August
by Chloe Blades
1. Olive, by Emma Gannon
This is the kind of novel that will leave an imprint of your silhouette in your reading chair, because it’s difficult to pull yourself away from this one.
When Emma Gannon shared her decision to be childfree by choice she was met with you’ll change your mind one day, as if her conscious decision was seperate from the direction nature would take her in.
Unable to recognise herself in the protagonists on her shelf, she brought four characters to life in Olive that will resonate with women the world over. Four friends’ close knit bond starts to fray in the face of the choice all women are confronted by; whether or not they can and want to have children.
Olive captures the shifting dynamics of female friendship when there is pregnancy, children, and the trauma of infertility in the circle; topics that could have been narrated with a tone matching the contention of them. Instead, Olive is moreish, comforting and warm with the simplicity of it mirroring and silencing the unencessity of society’s noise around women and motherhood.
(HarperCollins, pb, $33)
2. Outraged, by Ashley ‘Dotty’ Charles
Hailed as ‘the essential guide to living through the age of outrage’, Ashley ‘Dotty’ Charles, rapper and BBC 1Xtra presenter, explores how our age of outrage is debasing civil discourse as we cancel rather than discuss, shout rather than talk, and replace activism with clicktivism. This is a devilish, daring and perfectly succinct read.
With viral hashtags, fake news, and click-bait articles at the scroll of a finger, it seems we thrive on revelling in the vilification of others. Charles wants to know why, because often there’s “very little to gain by dragging someone down who’s life choices have little, if any, direct bearing on our own”. Yet here we are, able to conjure up the image of that person who’s a professional vilifier because it makes them feel morally superior.
I’m guilty of falling for the click-bait, admittedly. I wrote an outraged email to the American Society of Reproductive Medicine last week after reading an article in The Guardian about a study conducted by four Italian scientists on who’s more attractive: women with endometriosis or those without. Why not put the funding towards preventing endometriosis rather than using it to pit women against each other like that? But I won’t get back on board the outrage train and yes I did feel temporarily morally superior. But it’s unfortunate that I wrote my email before reading Outraged because it was an obvious hook, line and sinker kind of situation.
Charles uses thoughtfully researched examples of a controversial H&M jumper, Rachel Dolezal, Katie Hopkins and a multitude of hashtags to question if targeting our outrage for the matrix of the internet to bear witness to “reaffirms your righteousness,” or is it in fact a lazy act of clicktivism that proffers up a “villain against which our own ethics can be measured”?
Daring to call out the majority on their virtuous policing is brave territory to enter, especially when there is a cohort of moralistic arm chair generals at the ready hiding behind their self-proclaimed superiorness to take you down.
Aside from Charles’ bravery at broaching the subject of outrage, I’m a huge fan of her word wizardry, such as: “you’d never follow the crowd, right? Well allow me to shit all over your affirmations of volition”. Classic.
(Bloomsbury, pb, $33)
3. The Girl in the Mirror by Rose Carlyle
I had to take a meditative stroll around the village after reading this thriller as I‘d been on the edge of my seat with it for two days. The final twist unexpectedly slapped me right in the face and I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I won’t lie to you, though, this was my first ever crime novel, which is why when you come into the bookshop and ask me for the next best thing after that Harlan Coben you enjoyed I swiftly hand you over to a more adept member of the crime reading team.
If you’ve got a sister it’s easy to understand the incessant comparisons. She’s prettier, but she’s nicer; She’s thinner, but she’s funnier; She’s got beautiful eyes, but she’s got great hair. Only Carlyle amplifies all of this between identical twin sisters Iris and Summer to a point of hyperbole giving this novel its delicious punch.
An opportunity to take the life Iris has always envied is at her fingertips. Iris, the supposedly less attractive of the identical twins, is invited by her perfect sister Summer on a trip to sail the family yacht from Thailand to the Seychelles. Iris imagines this trip with her incredibly wealthy and hot brother-in-law, Adam, and agrees after the demise of her own marriage and career as a lawyer. Unfortunately, after a disaster at sea and a series of questionable but believable choices Iris gets tangled up in something of a dramatic pickle.
The bar has been set unprecedentedly high with The Girl in the Mirror and I am wondering if I should even bother with the thrillers I had in the pipeline to follow and simply retreat to the misery of American Politics? I’m open to ideas though and being persuaded otherwise, please get in touch on Instagram. There’s wealth, greed, lust and envy at the core of this psychological thriller, but I’m going to stop before I give too much away. I could really use a friend here to discuss the ending because I mean wtf. Wow.
Watch this space for an author interview.
(Allen & Unwin, tp, $33)