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A review by chennessybooks
Olive by Emma Gannon
4.0
Olive is 32. Loves her job as a journalist, loves the tight-knit group of friends she's had since the first day of school. Doesn't quite love how her nine-year relationship has ended because she didn't want children and he did, or the fact that her best friends are caught up in the more 'serious' problems of adult life - either having kids or desperately struggling to.
Olive's job lets her delve into the topic of choosing not to have kids by finding support groups and a dodgy healer lady, but being openly child-free leads to strife within the friend group...
Emma Gannon's background is as a journalist and podcaster, and the areas that she's looked at - the internet, careers, finding your passions & incorporating them into your life - all turn up here. My favourite line of the book is "Oh fuck off Clearblue adverts" - oh, feeling seen!
This is a topic close to my heart & there was a part of me, while reading it, going "oh and this happens too! You should talk more about that!", and I realise it's because I wanted this to be, like, the definitive popular-fiction take on not having kids. Because we don't see it (reading it, I found myself expecting the "and then I got pregnant and it was magical" plot, not because I thought that was where *this* book would go but that's where other books do). It's not just that it feels less dramatic than struggling to get pregnant, or facing the joys & challenges of motherhood, but as a choice it does seem, oh, valid in theory, of course, but really maybe just a little bit selfish, or immature, or indicative of a brokenness of some kind?
This particularly comes into play when Olive interacts with her friends, and the tensions here are the best bits of the book. There's also a romance plot (yay!) which has some stuff (no spoilers) I'd love to have seen more about, & what it means to have a particular role in someone's life. A quick read with many "ah yes" moments.
Olive's job lets her delve into the topic of choosing not to have kids by finding support groups and a dodgy healer lady, but being openly child-free leads to strife within the friend group...
Emma Gannon's background is as a journalist and podcaster, and the areas that she's looked at - the internet, careers, finding your passions & incorporating them into your life - all turn up here. My favourite line of the book is "Oh fuck off Clearblue adverts" - oh, feeling seen!
This is a topic close to my heart & there was a part of me, while reading it, going "oh and this happens too! You should talk more about that!", and I realise it's because I wanted this to be, like, the definitive popular-fiction take on not having kids. Because we don't see it (reading it, I found myself expecting the "and then I got pregnant and it was magical" plot, not because I thought that was where *this* book would go but that's where other books do). It's not just that it feels less dramatic than struggling to get pregnant, or facing the joys & challenges of motherhood, but as a choice it does seem, oh, valid in theory, of course, but really maybe just a little bit selfish, or immature, or indicative of a brokenness of some kind?
This particularly comes into play when Olive interacts with her friends, and the tensions here are the best bits of the book. There's also a romance plot (yay!) which has some stuff (no spoilers) I'd love to have seen more about, & what it means to have a particular role in someone's life. A quick read with many "ah yes" moments.