AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile
Laurel Lefkow's narration evokes the dark tone of this literary novel about a millennial tech worker. Stuck in a toxic Silicon Valley workplace and struggling with depression and anxiety, 33-year-old Cassie feels like she's falling into a black hole. Things worsen when she discovers that an affair has resulted in an unplanned pregnancy at the same time that a deadly virus is taking over the world. Lefkow's performance enhances the novel's bleak mood, building tension as Cassie unravels. While Lefkow capably channels the author's incisive social commentary on capitalism and inequality, the listening experience is hampered by the repetitive use of definitions followed by "e.g." Nonetheless, audiences who enjoy contemporary dystopian stories may want to check this out. V.T.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
★ 05/15/2023
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. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary. (July)
From the Publisher
"Surreal . . . visceral . . . Ripe has a dark, delicious edge." —TIME
“Sharp . . . absorbing . . . unforgettable . . . Etter’s exquisite prose powers the book. . . . [She] expertly diverts the novel from neat or didactic tropes. . . . [and] accomplishes what we seek in fiction: a deeply human connection.” —New York Times Book Review, a Best California Book of the Year
"A dark look at the underbelly of capitalism. . . . Sarah Rose Etter is a prophet for the sad girls." —NYLON
“A novel like no other. . . . Etter’s work is undoubtedly surreal, but then so is American life today. She knows how to channel its contradictions because she lives them. . . . Ripe hits very close to home.” —Los Angeles Times
"A masterclass in creating tension. . . . This is the kind of novel that reminds us that the apocalypse is now. Dystopia is here." —Roxane Gay
"It’s impossible to not feel pulled into Sarah Rose Etter’s Ripe, a beautifully paced 2023 novel featuring an intimate inner voice and a surreal, sinister plot. . . . At times darkly funny, this is a razor-sharp and honest portrayal of late-stage capitalism in the tech sphere." —Huffington Post, Best Books of 2023
"An explosive narrative of a woman coming undone as the world burns. . . . A deliciously bitter irony pervades. . . . A scathing look at corporate greed and its many dire consequences, this is deeply felt and cathartic.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"At once grim and playful, Ripe succeeds where other dystopian novels sometimes fail, by emphasizing the personal and particular agony of a single frazzled rat in the capitalist maze." —Philadelphia Inquirer
"[Etter] offer[s] catharsis and an undeniable voice that makes the book easy to devour." —Observer
“An existential page-turner . . . super dark and very funny . . . Etter yanks you into Cassie’s deep, meaningless void, and I’ve never had a more enjoyable time wading through this specific level of hell.” —Jezebel
“Etter opens Ripe with an onslaught of visceral imagery that stays at a fever pitch all the way through. . . . In a weird way, reading Ripe feels like being hit over the head with a cast-iron frying pan, then willingly going back for more. . . . clear-eyed . . . harrowing . . . powerful." —San Francisco Chronicle
"Etter tells this gothic tale of twenty-first-century anomie, isolation, and despair in potent, fast-paced passages that are rich with fairytale-esque drama and sharp with parable-esque restraint. . . . cathartic, addictive, delicious." —Chicago Review of Books
“A poignantly tragic, absurdist view of the 'late-capitalist hellscape' that is grind culture. . . . [A] glorious sucker punch of a second novel. . . . It’s a razor-sharp commentary on the relentlessness of tech culture and millennial striver conditioning.” —Shondaland
"A tense, vivid dystopian view of a capitalist America. . . . A searing satire of corporate culture and how we deal with the world around us when it feels like it’s burning . . . thoughtful and necessary." —Our Culture, Best Books of 2023
“[An] astonishing tour de force. . . . Masterfully juxtaposing 'wild amounts of wealth' with 'extreme poverty and displacement,' Etter examines deep inequities in an image obsessed, capitalist society. Her biting social commentary layers horror with dark comedy, using vivid imagery and striking language to great effect." —Booklist (starred review)
“A fresh voice, Etter, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel for The Book of X, will undoubtedly cement her place in the literary scene with this one.” —Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
“HOLY SHIT, this book wrecked me!” —Samantha Irby, New York Times bestselling author of Quietly Hostile
"A lurid, tense, and compelling novel. . . . Etter builds a lush and decaying landscape around a woman with an impossible affliction." —Kirkus (starred review), Best Books of 2023
"Sarah Rose Etter is a wonder, and this novel is a knife to the heart." —Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
"An absolute must read if you love an unravelling main protagonist. . . . Unsettling, tense, and funny . . . we think you’ll love this one." —Glamour (UK)
"One of the best novels of the year. . . . Etter is proving to be one of the most talented novelists of her generation." —Colorado Sun
author of With Teeth Kristen Arnett
Astoundingly bold, terrifically haunting, and deeply human. Etter refuses to pull any punches here, asking us to look directly at the nightmares we sometimes agree to live with in exchange for comfort and security.”
author of Blue Ticket Sophie Mackintosh
Ripe is a triumph—blade-sharp and unflinching. It walks a darkly gorgeous tightrope between the bitter and beautiful with skill that takes your breath away.”
AUGUST 2023 - AudioFile
Laurel Lefkow's narration evokes the dark tone of this literary novel about a millennial tech worker. Stuck in a toxic Silicon Valley workplace and struggling with depression and anxiety, 33-year-old Cassie feels like she's falling into a black hole. Things worsen when she discovers that an affair has resulted in an unplanned pregnancy at the same time that a deadly virus is taking over the world. Lefkow's performance enhances the novel's bleak mood, building tension as Cassie unravels. While Lefkow capably channels the author's incisive social commentary on capitalism and inequality, the listening experience is hampered by the repetitive use of definitions followed by "e.g." Nonetheless, audiences who enjoy contemporary dystopian stories may want to check this out. V.T.M. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-05-09
Cassie is just like many other women in Silicon Valley: She works hard, lives alone, and has few relationships that matter.
Cassie is also, perhaps, nothing like other women, because an actual black hole hovers over her, growing and shrinking and shimmering, matching her anxieties and moods. Through these contradictions, Etter has created a surreal landscape gradually building in bleakness. The first-person narrative follows Cassie as she struggles to perform at her startup's ruthless pace; she burns out regularly and does cocaine to keep up. Her precious hours outside work are spent in the company of friends who barely care about her or in pursuit of a man who, because of his existing girlfriend, refuses to be involved with Cassie beyond their intensely erotic dates. Set just as the Covid pandemic is beginning, the book evocatively depicts Cassie’s anxieties—about her precarious employment, rising rent, and a possible unplanned pregnancy. As in her Shirley Jackson Award–winning first novel, The Book of X (2019), Etter builds a lush and decaying landscape around a woman with an impossible affliction, but as the novel progresses it becomes clear that dead-end labor in a toxic workplace is even crueler to Cassie than the space-time collapse of a black hole following her around. Presenting a cross between the cruel relationships in Mona Awad’s Bunny, the painful work conditions in Raven Leilani’s Luster, and the unethical tech-industry practices in Anna Wiener’s Uncanny Valley, this novel reveals seemingly ordinary terrors. Etter's prose is spare: The story is told through short narrative sections interspersed with sections starting with a word and its definition (for instance, sex, work, and Salisbury steak) in which Cassie describes a memory through an idea or an object, as well as lists and notes. While the novel unfolds slowly, the violence and intensity of Etter’s style (as well as its calculated silences and pauses) produce a horror that lingers long after the story has ended. As Cassie says, “The truth of the world bares itself when the tide goes down: devoured, used, rotting.”
A lurid, tense, and compelling novel.
