I finished Ripe a little over a week ago, and the longer I sit with it the more I like it.

The use of the black hole to denote depression and anxiety, and the fake self were so relatable and clever. Etter's reflections on capitalism and big tech are obviously dialed up but I think are pretty accurate as a whole. I think millennials in particular can relate to the feeling of dread that's present throughout the whole book-- feeling like even though the world is ending, you have to keep pushing through at your soul-sucking job.

I think this will be a hit with fans of Severance by Ling Ma or My Year or Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh.

Heart pounding thriller that left me on the edge of my seat. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one. Definitely one of the best books this year.

absolute banger of a book--the metaphor of the black hole was apt and perceptive, without ever feeling kitschy or derivative. i hate to box this in to the slowly growing canon of "sad girl millennial corporate tragicomedy", but.....it belongs. i loved it, full stop.

tldr; add this one to your list when it comes out in july 2023.

i received an eARC of this via scribner and netgalley and was super excited to read Ripe. this book fully captures the millennial panic/dread felt by everyone caught up in the corporate grind, exemplified by the san francisco lifestyle and expenses. i really enjoyed the plot of this one but think a few things could’ve been fleshed out more, like the project prometheus plot line. i also thought that while the words and associated definitions that marked the beginning of each chapter were interesting and beneficial to the story, i was distracted by the “e.g., …” sections that started the bulk of most chapters.

WOW!!!! I wasn't too sure about this book going into it, but it was extremely addicting (no pun intended) Our main character is imperfect and flawed and struggling mentally and I think the author portrayed these well! While the story is short its gripping and written VERY well!

This book follows Cassie as she moves through her transplanted life in SF, working in the tech industry, and trying to stay afloat in a city with rent increases, wildfires, and a looming covid crisis,

It's a sharp, beautiful, and moving novel, dealing with start-ups, bad bosses, personal black holes, and the tech industry's soulless, capitalist environment. It's funny and bleak and hopeful all at once. I only wish there was more of it, because I could have kept reading it. I really wanted to spend more time with Cassie.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the ARC!

Oh I was INTO THIS. I can't wait for all of the sad girl lit fic people to read this when it comes out. Ripe reminded me a lot of the book Severance, and I think in some ways this is what I wanted My Year of Rest Relaxation to be when I first went into that one.

This book gave me a lot of anxiety thinking about work (particularly while working a tech-related job), hustle culture, and societal expectations. It's not even a little subtle with its satire of those things and in its "black hole as a metaphor for depression and anxiety" device. But it's clever, I could not put it down, and I have a feeling I'll be thinking about this one for a while.

Ripe is another one of those books I wouldn't necessarily recommend to everyone, but it was absolutely for me. Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC to review! I have a feeling I'm going to want to get a physical copy when this comes out.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of "Ripe" by Sarah Rose Etter.

"Ripe" read as a majestic work of literary fiction. While reading about Cassie's life was often stressful, it was a contemplative stress, relieved through Etter's gorgeous prose. The stunning cover image was what initially drew my attention; the theme certainly delivered, and was accentuated by the unexpected inclusion of the ever-changing black hole. Silicon Valley was discerned for what it truly is in a manner reminiscent of, but surpassing, Dave Eggers' "The Circle." Finally, props to Etter for her skillful mention of the "virus." I have read books that have done this wrong, but Cassie's intrigue at the virus' emergence felt authentic, not overdone.

this book is so unbelievably good, i genuinely loved every second of it (even tho it was incredibly bleak) and didn't want it to end. THANK u netgalley for the digital copy but laaawd am i getting my hands on a physical copy as soon as they're available !

this was such a wrenching, well-written reflection on the tech industry, mental illness, societal colapse, hustle culture and what it means to be a woman worn thin amidst it all. i knew i'd love it bc i loved 'book of x' but i have to say, i loved 'ripe' about 5x more. etter truly created a piece of art w/ this one.

RIPE follows cassie, a young woman one year deep into her “dream” tech job in silicon valley. this new path she originally welcomed as an escape from her hopeless former life quickly rotted to reveal the scathing realities beneath — a soul-draining workplace in the middle of a city that juxtaposes extreme wealth and privilege alongside poverty and crises. cassie is stuck walking the tightrope—always teetering on the edge of losing the cutthroat job opportunity, struggling to make ends meet and keep her head above water, yet never fully in crises.

at least, that’s what she tells herself. a black hole (metaphorical? literal? we get the sense it is both) follows cassie around, shrinking and growing depending on her mood. the ever present foreboding of the black hole only compounds that of the world around her — a mysterious virus in the headlines, the deaths of other silicon valley workers unable to take the pressures any longer, the looming housing crisis.

when her employer’s demands finally cross a moral line, and when her body demands to be put first, cassie is forced to confront her unraveling life and truly consider if there is a different way to live.

reading this book felt dystopian, yet every fiction presented in the book mirrors our bleak reality — wealth inequality, a generation of burnout overworked and underpaid employees, a pandemic growing ever closer, living paycheck to paycheck. etter captured this dread with candor and creativity. her insights on modern life are dismal yet astute, and are matched with vulnerable and touching flashbacks of cassie’s past. i appreciated that RIPE didn’t feel like a millennial gimmick — it felt incisive and infused with sincerity and humanity.

RIPE was unexpectedly grave. i yearned for morsels of hope, and think some aspects of the text could have benefitted from even more exploration — the housing crisis, the homeless man outside her home, the deaths across the city, the new-hire noor — but also respect that many elements were left intentionally unresolved and suspended in this existential malaise. that is, after all, more realistic, isn’t it?

a compelling and compulsively readable millennial tragedy. if LAPVONA and SEVERANCE had a book-child in silicon valley, it’d be RIPE. i’m impressed by etter’s dexterity blending elements of surrealism, dread, philosophy, all expressed through the horrors of day-to-day capitalism.

5/5 ⭐️

I appreciated this quick and thoughtful read which, despite its brevity, managed to delve deep into the modern-day dichotomy of who we really are and who we become at work to survive. I thought the storytelling handled dark and complex topics in a manner that drove the plot, while still weaving in social commentary at large. There were some graphic details that didn't always add to the story, but I felt the black hole through-line made sense and added to the dark sense of foreboding that followed Cassie until the end of the story.

This was amazing. It was FAR too relatable. The writing reminded me of my bestie Kate and the things we tell each other about work. However, we are in the public sector so it is evil but not like this. The abusive bosses, the fake selves, and the black hole are so relatable.
This also reaffirmed my desire not to ever work in tech despite my education in it. No thanks. I want to have a soul and not let my fake self drive everything.
The end was gorgeous.
I reccomend this to everyone.

The deal: Cassie is trapped in a Silicon Valley hell job. She is also followed everywhere by a literal black hole. (I got an ARC from NetGalley.)

Is it worth it?: This was a banger. At first, I was apprehensive about Etter’s dictionary-definition framing device, which would have felt gimmicky if the writing wasn’t so damn good. This book explores quite a bit — capitalism, family, womanhood, trauma, class, mommy issues, magical realism — all at once and manages to succeed in most of it. In short, if you interact with Silicon Valley even a smidge in your job (and feel not great about that fact), it’s worth exploring.

Pairs well with: Self Care by Leigh Stein, NSFW by Isabel Kaplan (presumably — I haven’t read), Devs on Hulu, Severance on Apple TV+

A

I can't say this book doesn't work. I can only say this book doesn't work for me. As someone who has worked in Silicon Valley and commuted all around the Bay Area for decades this book didn't work for me from page 1. No one calls CalTrain "the train." No one panhandles on CalTrain, it's too pricey--at least in my many years commuting I never saw anyone do it. No one who lives in San Francisco would say they were commuting to "Silicon Valley," they would name the town, the company. And on and on with the geographic and socio-cultural references in this novel just being wrong.

So what is the matter with me, worrying about these many mini factual errors in a book set in some vague time (maybe even the future, where everything might have changed?) and where the protagonist is followed around by a black hole? I mean, we're not talking about reality here, right? It's fiction, right?

Only: the observations the novel makes about this fictional "Silicon Valley" are the same obvious and superficial observations people make about the real place all the time. The novel paints a portrait of the Silicon Valley that everyone imagines for themselves already, whether you live and work here or not. The protagonist has nothing new to tell me, either about working in an environment where you feel deeply alienated from the rest of your coworkers, or about growing up with parents seemingly intent on destructive acts toward their progeny, or about being a young woman trying to navigate a meaningless career, or where people light themselves on fire on sidewalks (What? No they don't! Not so often anyway. But that early scene, one that promised something new and weird was to come, was never followed up with anything similarly bizarre and unexpected--to my regret).

Yes indeed we Silicon Valley people have long commutes and weird obsessions with smoothies and we work late and have meetings full of buzzwords, and we believe we're changing the world for the better through tech while ignoring the toxic waste dumps of our used-up products piling up from India to the Philippines, and we walk by the squalid poor all around us on sidewalks instead of helping them while we sleep in our company's parking lot in our RV in a mock reenactment of poverty ourselves, etc etc....and these are not very interesting things to say about our world. It's just the world as it is. The lack of unexpectedness in the Silicon Valley world painted in this novel made the little fact-wrongness stand out as weird and sloppy to me.

While I personally got nothing out of reading this novel, that's okay. Other people surely will. As for me I can still re-read The Book of X and be grateful such an author exists who could imagine that entirely unexpected world. Now that was killer fiction. Utterly original and yet familiar in all the best ways, and for a book about a woman whose stomach was tied in a knot, it was absolutely true. I would not have written so much if I didn't love this author and her amazing ability to forge new images in my head and I can't wait to read what happens in the next book she writes.

Ripe is a spot-on telling of living in modern times--when the world feels like it's ending every day and we're just expected to go on living. When our jobs become our lives, and all this work allows us to simply scrape by.

Cassie is a marketing associate at a tech company in San Francisco. This is the kind of company that gives out branded swag to its employees and expects them to wear it and buy into company culture. Cassie refers to these people as Believers, with a capital B. She is not a Believer herself, but while at work she code-switches, pretending to care about metrics and graphs while people are literally setting themselves on fire in the streets.

A black hole has followed Cassie around her whole life, from her childhood with a critical, unloving mother out west to Silicon Valley. I took this to be both a sense of foreboding and a manifestation of her depression, She also has a literal interest in black holes and physics, and Etter begins each chapter with a definition taken straight from the dictionary. I could've done without the definitions of more basic terms (work, bittersweet, daughter etc.), but that's a minor quibble. Ripe is a bleak illustration of living in a capitalistic society; while reading it, you may look up to see your own black hole above you.

Four and a half stars

• My initial interest in this book was very much a “judge a book by its cover” moment. The cover is striking and immediately caught my interest.

• Stunning cover aside, this book was a quick and thought-provoking read. It was written in a way that simultaneously exemplifies Cassie’s feelings of emptiness while being engaging and bold in its prose. The unique format of the book focuses on Cassie’s actionable present and past yet the ever-present black hole is constantly signaling how she feels at any given moment; it is beautiful, sad, and uncomfortable all at once. RIPE is already getting a lot of well-deserved buzz and will certainly be enjoyed by readers of Emily R. Austin, Mona Awad, & Melissa Broder.

Sarah Rose Etter has done it again! RIPE is a delicious and dark dive into tech culture that has so much else on its mind, from motherhood and gentrification to intimacy and the pandemic, while also grappling still with interesting questions on ethics/morality. Not to mention the black hole that Cassie was born tethered to, and which only she can see (rest assured, Etter is working in a similar vein to THE BOOK OF X).

Cassie is one year into a stint at a large tech company. The tech company is looking to gut a competitor---this is the thread I found to be most interesting, how Cassie becomes the mastermind of her employer's offensive. At the same time, Cassie has discovered she's pregnant, the father being someone not exactly available. The pandemic, naturally, is also looming.

Anyway, I loved RIPE. It felt more accessible than THE BOOK OF X, or perhaps at least made more for a commercial audience---in some ways, it felt like an improvement or growth. I can't wait to see what Etter does next!

Thanks to the publisher for the e-galley!

The Book of X is one of my absolute favourite books so I was nervous to see if I would enjoy Ripe as much but….she’s done it again!!

Sarah Rose Etter has such a talent for writing stories that explore hard, real world issues mixed with surrealism and strange elements- The Book of X explored pain and the aftermath of sexual assault while weaving in surreal elements like women born with knots in their stomachs and rivers of body parts. And with Ripe, she uses a similar formula, touching on so many current topics like homelessness, abortion, wildfires, a global virus, the cost of living crisis, capitalism and work culture, with the surreal element in this novel being a black hole that follows the main character around.

It feels like the author put all of her rage and feelings at our current world into this novel and I absolutely adored it. I can definitely see this book sitting alongside books like MYORAR, The New Me, Temporary and The Odyssey- the depressed lit girlies are going to eat this one up.

Thankyou SO much to Scribner for allowing me to read an early copy, I can’t wait to preorder my physical copy!!

Such a unique take on a young woman’s experiences living life in the tech industry while trying to make sense of the wealth disparities surrounding her.

Cassie thought she had landed her dream job with a new startup in Silicon Valley. Not everything is what it seems, though. From her observations of her out-of-touch coworkers complaining about the exotic fruit selection at meetings to the homeless man living below her window, she begins questioning the meaning of existence and where she fits into it all. Add in a strange “black hole” that seems always to be lingering around, feeding off of her anxieties, and you have one strange yet enticing novel.

While I enjoyed the premise, the main character was the star of the show. I especially enjoyed Cassie’s unusual way of looking at things. With her dry wit and somewhat disgusting observations, she is definitely a character I won’t forget; a true standout.
I highly recommend this to anyone looking for an unusual and entertaining novel.

The publisher provided ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I agree with Sarah… this one is a banger for sure!

Thanks to #NetGalley and the publisher for early access to this book in exchange for an honest review.