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We meet Olive in her early 30s, where she's coming to terms with the fact that she doesn't want children. Through scenes between the past and present we get to know her and her group of best friends, seeing all their lives change through the decisions they make and how this impacts their relationships. 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)*. 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 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.
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. Emma touches on subjects like friendship, women fertility, marriage, relationships, careers and society´s overall pressure on women throughout the book in a way that just made me feel all the feels. Her inner monologue, as we never hear from anyone else, is of a pretty dreadful human being. She moans when her friends are late but continually mooches around and turns up 15 minutes late to all of her meetings – including boasting that she’s so good at her job and so senior that she can turn up when she wants and no-one will challenge her. Olive lives in London and is a successful writer, and dealing with the heartache of splitting up with her long term boyfriend as he wanted to start a family but she doesn't. Olive's friends are announcing pregnancies, her insta feed is full of "I said yes!" pics and she's asked at every party if she's next. Her best friends are on different paths, but she must figure out her own and if she was right to the end her relationship. Jacob's best mate starting a healthy delivery food business so Jacob got free membership.... sorry WHAT. was this just an excuse to prove how Jacob and Olive were able to affordably eat well? the privilege dripping off this book, oh my days. how is this relatable?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. 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. 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.
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. Taking a group of female friends and exploring their lives and relationships is a staple of contemporary women's fiction, from Maeve Binchy's Circle of Friends to Patricia Scanlan's much loved City Girls series to captivating recent debuts from the likes of Eithne Shorthall and Dawn O'Porter. why do all books written by posh white women mention dinner parties? why have I never come across anyone in my entire life who has been to one? 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 😂) 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.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.
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). Leaving aside for a minute that Olive sounds like a baby-boomer, not a Millennial, what has she been drinking from that’s not a paper cup? Is she wistful for the days of Styrofoam?This started off well — we have Olive, the only single one in her friendship group, who doesn’t want kids and is surrounded by babies and talk about babies. She’s happy about her career and confident in her decision not to have kids. There were a few relatable moments. We were getting along, and I really enjoyed Sian Clifford’s narration. Emma Gannon has written a humorous, searching, thoughtful and honest book about Olive's decision and how it impacts her life, her relationship, her friendships, particularly those with her three best friends: Bea, who has it all - the husband, the house, and 2.4 children (3 actually); Cec, who is pregnant with her first child; and Isla who is struggling with infertility and the impact it's having on her marriage. 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:
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