A review by sararm
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter

dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.75

Cassie, the protagonist of Ripe, is extremely relatable: she works in corporate, has to disassociate to get on with her job and conjure up pretend-enthusiasm, struggles to perform normal actions against the backdrop of a city with extreme wealth disparity, and has, huh, clinic depression? An actual black hole?

The examination of corporate life in the tech sector is sharp and insightful. The way we are asked to pretend our jobs are part of our life mission, the way we allow them to overlap with our identity, how much our job signifies whether we've made it or not. And to do these pointless activities while living in a place filled with desperation, with an incoming pandemic and a climate crisis...

Ripe captures the utter hopelessness of this way of life, the failure at the core of it, so well. It's tense and stressful. This means that it's also fundamentally a hopeless, humourless novel. And you've got to wonder exactly what it wants to say, beyond I don't like it here.

Overall, I thought it was a bit uneven. The prose was largely wonderful, but the dialogue felt so so unnatural and stilted and the friendships, family and office dynamics rang a bit false. There is a particularly unbelievable fight with Nicole and Maria which took me out of the story.




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