Ripe
A Novel
-
- 14,99 €
-
- 14,99 €
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Named a Best Book of 2023 by Time, Huffington Post, Kirkus, and more * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Roxane Gay Audacious Book Club Selection * A Marie Claire Book Club Pick
A surreal novel with “a dark, delicious edge” (Time) about a woman in Silicon Valley who must decide how much she’s willing to give up for success—from an award-winning writer whose work Roxane Gay calls “utterly unique and remarkable.”
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets.
Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, growing or shrinking in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels.
When she ends up unexpectedly pregnant at the same time her CEO’s demands cross into illegal territory, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, unsettling yet darkly comic, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through our late-capitalist hellscape and offers a brilliantly incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Etter follows The Book of X with an explosive narrative of a woman coming undone as the world burns. Cassie, 33, toils for a cultlike tech startup, commuting by train from her expensive San Francisco apartment to the Voyager office in Silicon Valley. She copes with long hours and impossible demands from her bullying boss, Sasha, by doing cocaine and drinking cold brew, and barely keeps her anxiety, isolation, and explosive anger at bay with meditation techniques. After a sexually satisfying but doomed affair with a polyamorous chef ends, she discovers she's pregnant. The news headlines on her phone announce wildfires and a deadly virus, but even more menacing is the black hole that only she can see ("A dark heat emanates from its center. A metallic smell overtakes me, the scent of outer space," she narrates while on the train). Whether the black hole is a metaphor, a science-fiction element, or a symptom of psychosis, it shrinks and expands depending on her circumstances and emotional state. Etter cranks up the tension in her portrayal of Cassie's mind and of the workplace, as Cassie's rage increases and she gets roped into an illegal hacking scheme to take down a competitor. A deliciously bitter irony pervades; after a man self-immolates in Cassie's neighborhood, Sasha announces she's off to Burning Man; and while Cassie worries about how she'll afford an abortion, Sasha spends a fortune on freezing her eggs. A scathing look at corporate greed and its many dire consequences, this is deeply felt and cathartic.
