Chrysalis
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4.2 • 10 Ratings
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- £7.99
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
She is noticed by Elliot as he trains in in the gym. He sees her dedication to building her body and taking up space, and he is drawn to her strength. She is observed by her mother, as she grows from a taciturn, tremulous child into a determined and distant woman, who severs all familial ties. She is watched by her former colleague Susie, who offers her sanctuary and support as she leaves her partner and rebuilds her life, transforming her body and reinventing herself online. Each of these three witnesses desires closeness. Each is left with only the husk of the person they thought they knew, before she became someone else: a woman on a singular and solitary path with the power to inspire and to influence her followers, for good and ill.
Chrysalis a story about solitude and selfhood, and about the blurred line between self-care and narcissism. It is about controlling the body and the mind, about the place of the individual within society and what it means when someone chooses to leave society behind. It is a strikingly contemporary story about the search for answers and those we trust to give them to us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Metcalfe's perceptive if opaque debut follows a young woman's rise to becoming a wellness influencer after she leaves an abusive relationship. The unnamed influencer's mother, Bella, recounts her daughter's solitary childhood, and the uncontrollable and unexplainable shakes that made her the target of bullies. Another section is narrated by the influencer's friend Susie, who takes her in after her breakup with Paul, who she claims kept her locked in a room. A third comes from Elliot, who met the influencer at the gym and briefly became her lover before she disappeared from his life, after which he followed her videos of extreme workouts and long bouts of stillness and took up her mandated isolation from everyone in his life. As the influencer's "Still Life" routine gains prominence, she becomes a cultlike figure and the center of controversy after despairing family members can't reach their loved ones who joined the movement. Bella and Paul, meanwhile, provide conflicting accounts of Paul and the influencer's relationship compared to what she told Susie. The competing versions make for an intriguing exercise in narrative, but they also leave the reader baffled. Still, there are plenty of well-placed barbs on influencer culture (another influencer, one who gave the protagonist an early boost, posts videos of herself "wiping gem stones over her cheekbones"). Despite an uneven first outing, Metcalfe clearly has her finger on the pulse of internet culture and its habitués.
