Green Dot
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4.1 • 8 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A witty, profound and painfully relatable debut novel exploring solitude, desire, and the allure of chasing something that promises nothing.
WINNER OF THE 2024 MATT RICHELL AWARD FOR NEW WRITER OF THE YEAR
WINNER OF THE 2025 RUSSELL PRIZE FOR HUMOUR WRITING
'I wolfed Green Dot down over two nights. An incredibly funny book about a woman having an affair that's a really bad idea. Every sentence sparkles.' – Caitlin Moran, author of How to Be a Woman
'Brilliant. Riveting. Sharp. Funny. Dark. I want to give Green Dot all the adjectives but will content myself with saying it is one of the best books you will read all year' – Elizabeth Day, host of the How to Fail podcast
'I felt so much joy reading this utterly assured writing. Green Dot is written with such poise, such confidence, I could not look away. I was mesmerised by its sheer brilliance.' – Jessie Tu, author of A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing
Hera Stephen is clawing through her mid-twenties, working as an underpaid comment moderator in an overly air-conditioned newsroom by day and kicking around Sydney with her two best friends by night. Instead of money or stability, she has so far accrued one ex-girlfriend, several hundred hangovers and a dog-eared novel collection.
While everyone around her seems to have slipped effortlessly into adulthood, Hera has spent the years since school caught between feeling that she is purposefully rejecting traditional markers of success to forge a life of her own and wondering if she's actually just being left behind. Then she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Intoxicated by the promise of ordinary happiness he represents, Hera falls headlong into a workplace romance that everyone, including her, knows is doomed to fail.
With her daringly specific and intimate voice, Madeleine Gray has created an irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing; about the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century; and about the winding, torturous and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.
'I am obsessed with this book. I am obsessed with Hera, with her dad, her friends, her dog. I am obsessed with how funny she is, and how hopeful and dark and tender and bleak the world is through her eyes. Green Dot is a book about love, and how stupid and funny and absolutely beautiful life can be. I would read it forever if I could.' – Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Cherry Beach
'Laugh-out-loud funny and beautifully, brutally relatable - Green Dot is a book that will stay with me for a very long time.' – Ewa Ramsey, author of The Morbids
'Incredibly funny and a bit too real. This debut novel captures the zeitgeist.' – Brigid Delaney, author of Reasons Not to Worry and Wellmania
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Here is a book about professional inertia, identity crises, the limbo of post-uni life and the way a colleague might become more attractive as you spend day after day together. Even if he’s older, and married. Even if you’re more into girls lately. These are the relatable issues swirling around Hera, a 24-year-old who’s found a job moderating comments for an online news site. Bored with work, she starts flirting with that older journo, Arthur, and soon she’s deep in an affair. Sydney-based author Madeleine Gray gives hot-mess Hera an acid wit as well as a bad case of self-aware ennui. The Green Dot of the title symbolises connection online, but Gray is more interested in real-world consequences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Australian writer Gray debuts with the canny story of a 24-year-old woman struggling to be an adult. Throughout her life, Hera never believed in getting a job. In high school, she was a good student but not well liked, and since college she has been living with her father in Sydney, biding her time until she is forced to support herself. Eventually, she's hired as a "community monitor" for a digital news outlet. During her first week, she's ignored by the office's journalists and counts down the hours as she moderates online comments. Hera's dull routine brightens after an encounter with a manager named Arthur in the elevator, where she decides to "cannonball into conversation." Hoping to make an impression, she asks him, "Who do you hate most in the office?" Arthur responds later via DM, their chatting leads to drinks, and they begin an affair. Hera falls for him and develops an obsession, which only grows stronger as Arthur refuses to leave his wife. Hera is vibrantly written, and Gray thankfully provides her narration with enough distance for self-clarity ("It is possible that my dedication to this relationship was in fact a dedication to my belief in myself"). Gray's unflinching bildungsroman is great fun.
