Ripe by Sarah Rose etter Book Review

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***spoiler warning!***

Duh…

Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter is a dark and surreal novel a young woman, Cassie, who is working at a toxic Silicon Valley startup. The central theme of the novel is Cassie’s understanding of her own loneliness and depression which is represent by a literal black hole that follows her around. The novels comments on the bleakness and selfishness of modern life and the realisation that the American Dream is a deadly trap that is near impossible to escape from.

Though isolated from everyone, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, there has been a black hole that has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole becomes this ghostly creature that follows Cassie, wating for her to give in to its gravitational pull and fall into the unknown emptiness. We meet Cassie a year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup which turns out to be more of a nightmare of constant pressure, toxic bosses and unethical projects. When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal line and her personal life spirals towards a bleak precipice, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are worth the pain, or succumb to the black hole.

There are the constant parallels of the out of touch rich and the forgotten homeless to express the ideas of how disjointed corporate America and it is more of a trap then a answer to first world problems. My favourite example of this is when the privileged young graduates complaining about the choices of snacks in the conference room that looks out to a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. You have startup burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains and men setting themselves on fire in the streets. The corporate world seen through Cassie’s eyes is a destructive entity of its own that can only be escaped by death. The ending of the novel is left to interpretation to the reader of whether Cassie kills herself or not. I believe that she did, and all the other horrific self-inflicting acts done by others was a foreshadowing of Cassie’s own doomed end.

Etter effectively encapsulates the heavy feeling of imposter syndrome, burnout and the desperation to survive. I was fascinated by the presentation of the book with the black hole visually changing I read through the novel. However, though some scenes were stressful at times to read, I found it hard to really connect to the book. Perhaps because I have never been a “corporate girlie”. This meant I didn’t really remember much of what happened when I finished the novel.

I give it 2/5. Not bad but not memorable.