Olive
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3.9 • 211 Ratings
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
*Don't miss Emma Gannon's brand new novel, Table for One – available to pre-order now*
‘Explores such an important topic with a lightness and warmth’ Dolly Alderton
‘Thoughtful, funny, and honest’ Elizabeth Gilbert
‘It'll give a voice to countless women’ Marian Keyes
Olive and her friends have shared every milestone.
From first loves and first heartbreaks to flatshares and the first scary steps into the real world, they’ve been through it all – together.
But in the maze of life, through the winding paths that lead to different choices and different futures, will the bonds of friendship hold strong when Olive needs them most?
Moving, memorable and a mirror for anyone at a crossroads, OLIVE is a love letter to the life raft of female friendship and reminds us how, with a little courage, we can all follow our own paths.
Reviews
‘It explores such an important topic with a lightness and warmth’ Dolly Alderton
‘This tale of four young women trying to sort out the dilemmas of motherhood … will bring relief and recognition to many. It’s a lovely book — thoughtful, searching, funny, and (most importantly) honest’ Elizabeth Gilbert
‘Funny in parts, painful in others, thoughtful throughout, it explores many dilemmas, with characters who feel utterly real’ Sophie Kinsella
‘It'll give a voice to countless women . . . a profound issue wrapped inside an accessible, highly engaging novel’ Marian Keyes
‘Gutsy and refreshing’ HEAT
‘It's warm and charming and yet VERY brave in its honesty about having children and how that impacts female friendships. I suspect a lot of women will feel relieved and seen when they read it’ Holly Bourne
‘Important themes explored by a true champion of women’ Nina Stibbe
‘Thought provoking with a wonderfully relatable hero’ Good Housekeeping
‘So fresh and funny and utterly distinctive . . . I loved it’ Emma Jane Unsworth
‘A delicate, heartbreaking and delicious story that will bring a pang of delightful recognition to every woman who reads it’ Scarlett Curtis
‘A witty, tender portrayal of female friendship under pressure’ Mail on Sunday
‘Honest, relatable, and incredibly real, Olive is going to resonate with an entire generation of young women’ Louise O’Neill
‘In Gannon’s capable hands, women are not so much divided along their disparate lines – but united’ Pandora Sykes
‘Cuts rights to the heart of conversations around women and the stereotypes we either adhere to – or reject’ Cosmopolitan
‘I raced through this brilliant, brilliant book, feeling more thoroughly seen than I have in years. Olive's story is big and bright and beautiful, and holds up a much-needed mirror to society’ Lucy Vine
‘Incredibly warm and loveable, you won’t be able to put Olive down’ Bustle
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Emma Gannon has won significant acclaim as a podcaster and writer of non-fiction. Olive sees Gannon translate her warm, engaged and likeable personality to a heartfelt debut novel. It introduces us to a tight-knit group of female friends and tackles complex themes around motherhood, relationships and careers as women navigate their 30s. The titular Olive is childless by choice—a decision that has contributed manfully to the break-up of a nine-year relationship. Isla is desperate for children and has endured numerous failed rounds of fertility treatment. She’s finding it particularly difficult to celebrate Cec’s pregnancy. Bea, meanwhile, is a mother of three and exhausted. While the sort of book that you could glide right through on a Sunday afternoon, this connects on a deeper level, too. It challenges important stereotypes and presents women—and female friendships—in a wonderfully unvarnished way. Just as it should be.
Customer Reviews
Thought provoking
I found this debut novel to be well written and thought provoking. This was the first time I had read a book where the difference between being childless and childfree was discussed in such an honest way.
Olive and her three friends are all on different pathways at the start of the book, can their longtime friendship survive motherhood, IVF and choosing to be childfree? Emma Gannon shows how each friend is facing challenges that their other friends haven’t noticed, and actually need their friends more than ever before.
An impressive debut novel about friendship needing to evolve and making choices. I look forward to reading more by Emma Gannon in the future.
Can’t decide if I liked Olive or found her annoying
I still can’t decide how I completely feel about the character Olive. Yet I have given four stars because the language and the flow of the book were great. Couldn’t put the book down. I felt mum with children were poorly portrayed though and their partners. I don’t think you either don’t want to have kids or dying to have kids and if you have kids your partner is not helping. There were some things that I didn’t agree with or thought they were generalisations but it was a well written book. Olive’s personality development was great, at the end I liked her better.
Boring!!
Ordeal to get through this book but kept hoping it would pick up. Self indulgent, kept boring on about the “child-free” theme. Not enough content for an entire book.