“The amount of pain we can endure is spectacular. We are conditioned to withstand torture, to haul gray boulders of hurt on our shoulders, to confront the pressure endlessly, the heavy rough stone wearing away at us until our skin breaks open, revealing the bloody red flesh below,” (Etter).
Cassie has been employed with Voyager for a year and finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare, constantly oscillating between her fake self at work and her real self at home. She endures the toxicity of her boss Sasha and the charismatic CEO who will do anything to make sure Voyager is a success while listening to her colleague complain about an exotic fruit spread while a homeless man sleeps outside of her apartment window. She hangs out with two friends she doesn’t particularly like and is dating a chef who has a girlfriend. But despite the feelings of loneliness Cassie is never really alone, a black hole follows her, changing it’s size wherever she goes, watching and waiting.
Workplace Dystopia Novels are the new Sad Girl Novels. I think. Don’t quote me on that, BookTok might get mad. But I’ve definitely noticed a rise in millennial ennui workplace novels, and I’m here for that. It’s definitely a topic that’s relatable to many readers, unfortunately, which makes these novels an uneasy drawing card for some readers just looking to escape their listless working lives with an easy read. But sometimes it’s nice to read about what you know, to critique it through a fictional lens with a blackhole for company.
I loved how the novel was sorted in parts by the parts of a pomegranate and blackhole, then separated with definitions and examples to that definition with examples from Cassie’s life, and then continued with a glimpse into Cassie’s current working life in San Francisco. It made the story flow really well and kept me interested and involved while I was reading. And I liked Cassie as a protagonist, I think Etter did a wonderful job showing Cassie stuck in this situation she doesn’t know how to get out of and knows that she can’t. There’s an expectation with people to go to school, get a job, work and then die. So even though Cassie dislikes her job there’s no way out of it. Her parents have made it clear that there’s no room for her back at home, that she has a dream job that people would die to have, that even though she has this dream job she can barely afford rent. Cassie lives in a nightmare, but it’s the reality of many: we work until we die, this Sisyphian task we grow no closer to completing, that we have no choice but to endure and struggle with unless we want to struggle in other ways.
My one gripe is that her brother is mentioned briefly and then disappears. I’m not sure if there’s significance in that or if he was just forgotten.
Ripe is sad, depressing, and all too real which is why it’s important to read. When we struggle to understand things in our lives and are intimidated by non-fiction we turn to fiction to soften the blow, to put words and scenarios through make believe characters to better understand ourselves and our situations. Etter does an excellent job of this here, and I can’t wait to see what else she has in store for reader’s!
Publisher: Scribner
Pages: 288 (Libby)
Source: Libby
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Science Fiction
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤.5
Summary:
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. In addition to the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. Startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains, and men 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, its size changing 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 her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.
Sarah O'Connor 