Olive: The acclaimed debut that’s getting everyone talking from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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She lies, too, telling people she’s busy with work when she really wants to run a bath and relax. Nothing wrong at all with relaxing, and taking time for yourself – but I believe that you should be honest and tell your friends and boyfriends what you’re doing, or at least recognise that it’s a bit crap of you to lie outright. It was interesting to read this straight after Cho Nam-Joo's Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 which explores similar themes within a different cultural context. The novel depicts a Korean woman's life and the resentment and mental distress that can build from a lifetime of small and large oppressions and misogyny. In Olive, instead, we see a lighter and more optimistic take: what's possible when a woman strays from the well-trodden path laid by centuries of women before her. What normally happens at a baby shower then?’ I whisper to Bea. I almost feel like I’ve paid money to be here, and I want a performance.” suspiciously? As in, they’re fake? And you find it suspicious that she’s … pretending they’re not? Except I think this character is fully aware that her boobs look too perfect to be natural. Isn’t that surely, say, the point of getting a boob job? I dunno, I feel it’s more feminist to just not comment on people’s boobs, suspicious or otherwise. This is a clever choice by Gannon, immediately upping the stakes and crystallising what Olive stands to lose by not having a child. Her best friends – Bea, Cec and Isla (names, along with Olive herself and her sister Zeta, that collectively make you long for a Mary or a Jane) – are unfortunately too preoccupied with their own dilemmas to support Olive through her crisis.

But let’s talk about the rep first! Olive is a 30-something powerhouse of a woman who works in a feminist magazine and loves meeting up with her friend group after work for dinner & wine. She is perfectly content with her life until her long-term boyfriend tells her that he is ready to start a family. But Olive doesn’t want kids. And even though this realisation doesn’t seem ground-breaking to Olive at first, she soon notices that her relationship and friendships are going to be turned upside down because of it. Everyone turns on her with the same offensive arguments that I have heard during my life. I was afraid to give this 5 stars because I´m completely biased here: I´m the same age as Olive, and I also chose not to have children. It´s NOT EASY to find characters like her in contemporary lit. I’m usually drawn to novels more lighthearted in their themes, but actually this realistic tale was exactly what I needed in 2020- something that showed a less perfect adaption of life as a woman. It affirmed for me that the choices we make and different destinations we arrive at are always valid, even when they differ from those closest to us. Olive was refreshing and raw and served as a much-needed reminder that finding joy from decisions that don’t follow the crowd tend to be the most rewarding.For August’s book club, we had the pleasure of reading Olive, the hotly-anticipated novel by Sunday Times Author, Journalist & Podcaster, Emma Gannon. Emma Gannon’s Olive takes the tried and tested formula and breathes new life into it with an examination of four female friends whose paths diverge after a close-knit college experience. The book’s protagonist is the titular Olive, whose first-person narrative focuses on her decision to not have a baby, or to be childfree by choice (CFC). Olive's is not the only perspective to relate to though - each of her friends have a different relationship to motherhood and family - with one friend struggling to conceive through IVF, another with older children but a struggling marriage and a new mother navigating pregnancy and then life with a baby. Empathy is cultivated for each character, poignantly highlighting the struggles that aren't always seen or understood and yet how easy it is to be jealous without knowing this. While the friendships are strong it doesn't shy away from showing how maintaining connection through such huge life changes can be challenging, and the ways we can miss each other when communicating. I loved how this friendship group feel like the heart of the novel too, over any romantic narratives. Still, my generation continues desperately to hunt for things to do in the face of the greatest catastrophe some of us (or our children) may live to see. We give up meat and take holidays closer to home, even when we know that if the super-rich cut their emissions to that of the average EU citizen, global emissions would drop by a third. But we can’t make anyone else do anything, so we do what we can, and we justify our choices as being meaningful, bigger than us. Olive is rather cynical and very forward in many ways. She's a journalist primarily focused on the lifestyle section in a magazine. She's at the age where all her best friends are getting married and having babies, meanwhile Olive doesn't want children. It's a realization that ends a 9-year relationship and puts her at odds with her long-time friend group, which includes a mother of three, one who is pregnant, and one whi is struggling through IVF.

I’d already read Emma Gannon’s The Multi-Hyphen Method, and followed her work from the early days of the “Girl Lost in City” blog, so I was interested to see what her first novel, Olive, would be like. The story is told from the perspective of Olive, a millennial journalist living in London whose life is at crossroads. As her university friends settle down and start to have families, she realizes she’s “different”: she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want to have children. As their lives take different paths, tensions take hold, and Olive wonders what it is she really wants in life.

Olive is at a crossroads in life. The crossroads being her partner of nearly a decade wants kids, and she doesn't.

I think so many women will see themselves in this book. I could definitely connect to that feeling of being "behind" and separate - the description of Olive being with a group of mothers feeling outside their bond and with nothing to contribute to the conversation is so perfect. We don't see characters like Olive in books or media and it's a breath of fresh air to have her here - it will mean a lot to many I'm sure.Gannon depicts female friendship with warmth, and intimacy, revealing the grey-areas and the complexities of choosing a life on a different path to that of your friends. In depicting what it might mean to not want children, Emma Gannon also vividly depicts what it’s like to choose the more accepted path of motherhood – this is a ‘default’ option which is no easier for women. Olive works on writing one (1) magazine story for the entire length of the book (and at least the entire length of another character’s maternity leave), which she doesn’t even finish or publish. She gets promoted multiple times, eventually to editor-in-chief. When I think that it won’t hurt too much, I imagine the children I will not have. Would they be more like me or my partner? Would they have inherited my thatch of hair, our terrible eyesight? Mostly, a child is so abstract to me, living with high rent, student debt, no property and no room, that the absence barely registers. But sometimes I suddenly want a daughter with the same staggering intensity my father felt when he first cradled my tiny body in his big hands. I want to feel that reassuring weight, a reminder of the persistence of life.

MY THOUGHTS: Oh where do I start? This is chic-lit, but not chic-lit. It is funny, and serious at the same time. Olive explores many things, but mainly the dilemma of the woman who chooses not to have a child. (No, I am not talking about abortion.) While Olive's friends are all madly nesting, and procreating, or trying to procreate through IVF, Olive makes the decision to remain 'child-free'. The book also went over the top in other areas. I found many of the characters annoying or one-sided; I felt like some characters refused to see anything from each others’ perspectives, and the dialogue was cringey at times. I even found a couple different disturbing remarks that the characters make, here is one of them: Olive is just figuring life out and sometimes it looks a little different to how other people see it. At the end of the day, just like in real life - it doesn’t matter, why’s it a problem. Just do you!! This is, and I cannot stress this enough, an utterly insane response to have to baby showers, and a nonsensical question from a person with a phone in their hand at all times. It’s a very realistic story. Everyone has problems, each choice brings its own set of issues. No one is always likeable.Isla's parents dying in a "freak" car crash. I'm sure it wasn't planned? (reeks of needing to get the word count up??!) I absolutely LOVED reading Olive. I straight away felt so connected with the main character Olive, I felt a lot of compassion for her as she navigated her recent breakup and the disconnect she felt from her close friends who were either pregnant, had children or were trying for a child. This book really delves into the social construct that all women are expected to want children and if they don’t, something must be wrong with them or they will ultimately change their mind. As a woman who isn’t particularly maternal and has also never really felt the “buzz” of starting a family one day like some of my friends have since the age of 16, I could really see myself in Olive. This book really explores the issues women face, whether they want children or not, whether they can have children or not. Olive is so honest and real, showing how friendships can begin to break down when everyone grows up and starts wanting different things. How navigating adult life can be so difficult, especially when you aren’t hitting the ‘expected milestones’, which can make someone feel so isolated. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and absolutely loved the ending which gave a peek into Olive and her friend’s futures, would definitely recommend! I don't want to forget that we are still young. It's clear that our lives are at a major crossroads. We are no longer sat at the traffic lights, though, everyone is already zooming off in different directions. I wish everyone and everything would slow down just for a moment." Sometimes we don’t ‘know’ for sure, and maybe we never will, but we just have to live each day in the way that feels most natural to us.”