Wow. This was such a beautiful and powerful novel. "Ripe" completely took me by surprise. Of course, I was intrigued by the gorgeous, vivid cover art, but this book just took my breath away. The tone of this book is perfection. It's haunting, eerie, depressing, unsettling, and deeply profound. The whole "black hole" allegory was so dead-on. The writing was stunning. Sarah Rose Etter has a way with words. I deeply cared about Cassie. I just wanted to give her a big hug. It's amazing how far are minds and bodies are pushed to the limits when in the throes of stress and workplace pressure. I will definitely be thinking about this novel for a long time. Exquisite storytelling.

Thank you, Netgalley and Scribner for the digital ARC.

Ripe, by Sarah Rose Etter, gives us a first-person perspective on Cassie, a young woman who has moved to San Francisco to join the wave of tech on the verge of the Coronavirus pandemic. The book addresses topics ranging from anxiety, to toxic workplace culture and company ethics, to the instability and injustice of the housing crisis in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I think the book sought to address many key topics, and while that represented the complexity of the narrative for the Bay Area, I do not feel that the book dove into the topics enough to make so many references to them (i.e., the wildfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, the unhoused). Perhaps, this was meant to be a device to illustrate the anxiety Cassie felt; however, given that other topics were explored deeply (i.e., workplace culture and ethics), I was left wanting more from the protagonist. I did not feel that her character challenged any of these topics, but instead chose to be a victim of them (which may well have been the intent of the author).

The author used a "dictionary device" throughout the book to lead readers through two key tracks of thinking - one related to anxiety (the black hole) and one related to a pomegranate (withholding for spoilers). I found that this gave me a "clue" of what was to come, but did not feel that it added to the story in a meaningful way. It may have been more useful to pick either the black hole definitions (this felt more "mature" as a concept) as opposed to the fruit references instead of pursuing both.

go and immediately put this on your 2023 TBR & then come back to read the rest of this.

holy moly. I was stoked when I got the approval for this on net galley so thanks much to @scribnerbooks for blessing me with this. so beautifully written & I couldn’t put it down.

a story of a woman with a black hole that’s followed her as long as she can remember . always lurking there and reacting.

and that same woman working a soul sucking, corporate job in Silicon Valley (in early 2020 although that’s not stated outright).

just the general format is something I haven’t seen before - the definitions, personal reflection and then real time plot. it was so well thought out & you can tell that on first read.

there are so many little details weaved throughout and I can’t even begin to describe them because the novel has blown my mind👩‍🍳💋

I don’t do this often with galley reads but I cannot wait to own a hard copy of this and tuck it right on my shelf next to Moshfegh and Rooney.

pub date: July 11, 2023 (write that down)

I read this book in a day, so it's safe to say it's well-written and compelling. The Moshfegh comparison feels apt. I appreciate the creativity that went into the structure and style of the novel and found the definitions to be a nice touch. I appreciated seeing the protagonist go into the abortion decision and survive it (something media can be notoriously bad about) and I liked the relationship the protagonist had with her dad. The detail about him working at the supermarket in her hometown felt very poignant to me.

I wish I could say I loved this book, but something about it just didn't click for me. I noticed there were almost no positive descriptions of women in this book, and the protagonist displayed much more empathy and compassion toward men than women. Certainly, plenty of women do feel and think this way, and that's an interesting narrative approach, but it didn't feel especially fresh here. This also felt like a book where things happened to the narrator and she made few choices (the abortion being the exception, plus quitting her job at the very end) and leaned into the wallowing. Again, I think this is a fine choice.

Perhaps the efforts that went into the unhoused population--including someone right outside her window--linger for me in a difficult way. Rents are high and the protagonist is overworked, but she never really answers why she doesn't move elsewhere. We get some mixed messages about her family's financial background, and the protagonist insists she and her tech friend are in the "middle" of SF economy, but she seems pretty solid to me. It also was never clear to me if her mom had a spending problem or not; we're told she has student loans, but we're also told she went to an in-state college on a scholarship and that her parents paid for some. So did dad actually need to work at the grocery store or not? Who knows! But for all the descriptions of unhoused people circling around the protagonist, I started to wonder why I didn't get to read a story about their life and not the familiar tech one before me.

All of this said, I'm sure plenty of folks are going to love this book. It has that very Cool Girl feel to it, and it has some gorgeous sentences. It's an enjoyable read, and ag