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

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There are also several points where Olive as narrator just comes across as monumentally stupid. I cannot think that this is on purpose, for two reasons: 1) it is just not what most writers aim for, especially in commercial fiction and 2) I can’t give Gannon credit for trying to pull a ‘The Idiot’ style move with her POV character. Here are some of the more egregious examples: The novel follows the main character, Olive as she navigates her early thirties with her close friends, who she has been best friends with since school. The novel moves seamlessly between her twenties and thirties, introducing new themes and situations in a very easy-to-follow way. Olive is a young woman, with a great career, which she loves, who has recently broken up with her long-term boyfriend, Jacob. I went through this book mostly nodding because everything that is explored is relevant especially considering how women’s experiences are so affected by the patriarchal society we live in. But at the end of the day I feel like 90% of Olive’s problems could have been solved by speaking to her friends 👀 I was also leaning towards the feeling that the conversation felt outdated but I realised that that sentiment stems from the fact that my friends and I have never assumed each other’s position when it comes to motherhood, a topic that we explore every now and then (just to keep each other updated you know 😂) The parallels with Dawn O’Porter’s recent novel The Cows are strong, though Olive’s pursuit of a childfree life sets Gannon’s debut apart. Other recent publications dealing with the same issue are Sheila Heti’s Motherhood, an intricate and more intellectual exploration of the subject, and Megham Daum’s collection of essays Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on Their Decision Not to Have Kids. The latter is referenced in Olive, as are contemporary touchstones such as the Moth Storytelling Night, and a CFC event in Shoreditch inspired by its format.

The guilt women feel, whether they have multiple children or none, whether they work in an office or at home, whether they take to new motherhood or find it a struggle, whether they conceive naturally or through IVF or sometimes not at all, is the axis of the novel, and Gannon’s four vibrantly drawn characters all suffer from it in some way. Clive Owen and Claire-Hope Ashitey in Children of Men, the 2006 adaptation of PD James’ novel. Photograph: Allstar/UNIVERSAL/Sportsphoto Ltd. We are in the middle of a mass extinction, the first caused by a single species. There are 7.8 billion of us, on a planet that scientists estimate can support 1.5 billion humans living as the average US citizen does today. And we know that the biggest contribution any individual living in affluent nations can make is to not have children. According to one study, having one fewer child prevents 58.6 tonnes of carbon emissions every year; compare that with living car-free (2.4 tonnes), avoiding a transatlantic return flight (1.6), or eating a plant-based diet (0.82). Another study said it was almost 20 times more important than any other choice an environmentally minded individual could make. Such claims have been questioned. After all, does a parent really bear the burden of their child’s emissions? Won’t our individual emissions fall as technologies and lifestyles change? Isn’t measuring our individual carbon footprint – a concept popularised by oil and gas multinational BP – giving a free pass to the handful of corporate powers responsible for almost all carbon emissions? The only thing that isn’t up for debate is that we all know that we are living in ways that can’t continue. Some scientists call the plummeting birth rate 'jaw-dropping', but perhaps it is an understandable consequence of the existential malaise many of us feel This sounds like just my thing, a voice for her generation and covering a topic which resonates with me – I’m 37 and don’t have children, although I am fortunate to have lots of nieces and nephews as well a surrogate nieces and nephews. I’m sorry to say, as I do appreciate how much blood, sweat and tears go into the publication of anything – I really disliked it. I hated Olive and her voice, she is breathtakingly selfish and self centred and then constantly wonders why her friends are not replying instantly to her WhatsApp messages. This review is going to contain spoilers, so I can talk a bit about specifics. Don’t read on if you do want to read this without knowing some of the details and plot points.Olive is a delicate, heartbreaking and delicious story that will bring a pang of delightful recognition to every woman who reads it' Scarlett Curtis right yes, the continuity issues in this book are so damn obvious. it's been mentioned that Olive may need to get a flatmate to help pay the rent. but when Isla comes to stay, she has to get out the sofa bed? When asked why I do not have children, I have given various explanations over the years. “It is a complex situation” is vague enough to make most interrogators look ashamed for having asked. If I say, “I am worried about the environment”, parents often tell me in hushed tones that they have wondered whether their children will be able to have children too. (In my meanest moments, I think: “Really? How hard did you think about that?” And then I feel a deep, sour sense of shame, because I have a choice in the matter and rightfully, so do they.) But “I don’t want to” is the only answer that provokes a flinch. Choosing to have children is neither inherently good nor selfish, and the same goes for being child-free I'm pretty sure that there are a lot more novels about wanting and not being able to get kids than there are about not wanting them. Olive adds to the choices of what you can read on the topic. It's worthy of praise for discussing the topic. It’s a very realistic story. Everyone has problems, each choice brings its own set of issues. No one is always likeable.

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). This was a debut novel but it didn’t read like a debut. Gannon is a broadcaster and Webbie nominated podcaster and has written a business book. And it’s probably this self confidence that comes through in her novel. THE AUTHOR: Emma Gannon is a Sunday Times bestselling author, speaker, novelist and host of the no. 1 careers podcast in the UK, Ctrl Alt Delete. I found the expression of the various friends' prejudices very interesting. The sub-fertile friend who thinks her suffering must be somehow more noble and worth talking about than her newly single friend's loneliness and sense of loss. The general ganging up of the mums against the non-mum, the sense that Olive's life was somehow less valid and interesting in their eyes, her inability to talk about her broken relationship because her friends were so self-interested. All good valid discussions.

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Children gather at Parliament Square, London, to protest against climate change in February 2020. Photograph: Alberto Pezzali/AP The main character is whiny, self absorbed, judgemental and lazy. She definitely doesn't deserve to have the booked named after her - she's utterly uninspiring. She's a terrible 'mascot' for childfree women. I think it's clear the author does not truly grasp what childfree women are like - she conceptualises them as people who are too immature to sort their lives out and too self absorbed to ever consider making sacrifices for others. It actually damages the image of childfree women, rather than supports it. 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. The book centres around the titular, Olive, a child-free by choice protagonist. Novel idea, huh! It shouldn’t be the case but it is and Gannon definitely spotted a gap in the market to have this necessary & nuanced conversation.

I received a free advance reader copy of Olive in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to the publisher, author and Netgalley! Receiving a e-copy has in no way influenced my opinions on the book. The book focuses on the expectations placed on Olive and her friends as women, the expectation that they will get married, have children, and so when Olive’s narrative and life does not follow this route, we see, through the book, how she navigates and negotiates this with her friends. The story is a haphazard patchwork of events, present jumbled with past, with no clear storyline in sight. I had no idea where the book was going. The author has no sense of pacing. Seemingly important events are tossed aside - e.g. Jeremy cheating on Bea; Olive seems to completely forget or not care about this until she suddenly has the presence of mind to randomly call her ‘best friend’ while sitting on the toilet. So much for deep and lifelong friendship? And then skipping entirely over the start of Olive and Marcus's relationship? They're just suddenly together, comfortable, and cooking each other food; no mention of how this must feel coming out of a 9-year relationship. Unimportant events are included for no reason, such as getting ready to go out to a club with colleague Colin - but then the actual outing is skipped entirely. Overall, this is a well written book which looks at relevant issues and is thought provoking. It’s funny, sad, happy with tension as the main characters different perspectives tests their friendship but ultimately it’s a message about acceptance about who we are rather than whether we do or don’t wish to reproduce and being happy in our own skin. The author has proved that it is possible to look at feminist issues in an entertaining way and I applaud her for that.This is going by their consistency in reviewing mediocre-to-astonishingly-bad books with universally positive – indeed glowing – epithets. Now, there’s a whole other essay to be written on how your outlook changes – at least in public – when you become a writer with writer friends. Certainly, if Emma Gannon was my friend, the strongest move I would make against her work is to damn it with faint praise. However, Gannon is not my friend, she is not a good writer, and this is not a good book. And it’s ok that she’s still figuring it all out, navigating her world without a compass. But life comes with expectations, there are choices to be made and – sometimes – stereotypes to fulfil. So when her best friends’ lives branch away towards marriage and motherhood, leaving the path they’ve always followed together, she starts to question her choices – because life according to Olive looks a little bit different. I'm 'child-free by choice' (CFBC as the books terms it) and I've never found it to be the cause of any drama whatsoever. The night ended with loud music and dancing on tables, and the restaurant staff seemed to love it just as much as we did, pouring free shots straight from the bottle into our mouths.”

I feel the need to preface this review with the caveat that my low star rating is not because of the subject matter covered by the novel, but because of the novel's execution. In fact, the concept of a story about a woman contemplating a child-free existence was what drew me to the novel, despite my concerns about Gannon residing in a circle that includes Dolly Alderton, Pandora Sykes, and Daisy Buchanan (all good podcasters and terrible novelists), as well as Marian Keyes and Louise O’Neill (great writers with abysmal reading tastes)*. 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.

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. For August’s book club, we had the pleasure of reading Olive, the hotly-anticipated novel by Sunday Times Author, Journalist & Podcaster, Emma Gannon. Please don't hate me for a 3-star. That's easily the highest I've given something in this genre in a long time. Olive is worth a read and could be a good choice for a book club - just don't be surprised if the discussion comes to blows and you end up with prosecco all over the carpet. I happened to read 2 books about friendship, right after the other and it got me thinking about my own 😌. I actually told my high school friend the other day that I’ve been so blessed when it comes to friends (which I’m super grateful about 🥺). However, that also meant that while I was reading this novel I found myself struggling to understand Olive and her relationship with her friends.