Adulthood

 

Olive by Emma Gannon is a contemporary read that examines the choices that young women make in their lives. In Olive, thirty-three-year-old Olive Stone as a millennial feels strongly about not having a child of her own. She has no sign of ” twitching ovaries’ or fertility flutters, or random broodiness.”

As the editor-in-chief of .dot, an online platform, she writes this:

   ‘I hold babies and , sure, they ‘re cute, but I give them back and don’t feel any biological shifts or urges. I see pregnancy announcements online and press the heart button but feel zero jealousy. I picture myself twenty, thirty years into the future, with silver in my hair, walking on a beach with a partner, writing in the evenings with a glass of wine, and multiple nephews and nieces visiting me in my cosy home. There might be no children of my own in my future, but why should this cause me any worry? ‘

The fiction is narrated in Olive’s voice. It explores different variations on adulthood and motherhood. Olive tells her readers ‘ the decision to have kids might be one of the biggest choices we ever face, and we should be talking about this in all its complicated, nuanced depth.‘

In 2019, Olive breaks off a nine year relationship with Jacob whom she loves and adores. Jacob wants kids and her not wanting kids is a deal breaker. She is heartbroken but like all those who have been in love and then out of love, you go through a period where you mope and wonder if you will ever feel the same way again or resist the temptation to just rekindle the relationship that will only end in more heartaches and tears. Olive is terribly sad, crying and drinking booze a lot and leaving heaps of washing -up that needs doing. She feels like a woman made of ‘Play-Doh‘. She distracts herself ‘ by watching Netflix documentaries about climate change, serial killers, and how the world is totally fucked beyond repair.’ She watches old episodes of MTV Cribs on Youtube and even forces herself to have a haircut. But none of it helps. She badly wants to share her news with her close friends from college flat share days. She finds that she can no longer connect with her married friends whom they have gone through things together and vowed to be there for each other no matter what. For a start, they cannot hang out freely just like before. Bea is a mother of two, and she is naturally good at running a household, a planner and organizer. ‘In Bea’s book, you embrace the madness of life and stop trying to control everything by keeping your life clean and orderly‘. When Cecily gets pregnant, both Bea and Cec become close. Cecily used to be the friend whom Olive can count on when she wants to have a wild evening out but now she is an expectant mother who is trying to do everything right for her first child. Isla has been struggling for months in trying for a child through IVF . Olive cannot tell them how she is really feeling and the reason why she and Jacob have broken up.

‘ Everyone else seems to have exciting or important news, while my only update is that my relationship has come to an end.’

So Olive begins to weigh the pros and cons to have or not to have babies. She feels lonely and to her friends, she is not a grownup. Of course everyone of her friends is just too involved with their own trajectory based on the choices they have made. They each have expectations of how the others will be understanding and supportive of some of the big changes they are going through and be there for each other. Olive feels alienated and in standing by her own feelings of not wanting children of her own, she ends up looking like she is totally insensitive to women like Isla who is struggling to conceive.

Olive by Emma Gannon is primarily a story about becoming adults and friendship between four women who manage to move pass their differences and follow their own paths and make peace with whatever life throws at them. It is sweet and funny, a commendable and thought-provoking read about cross-roads and milestones in life. Gannon is a Sunday Times bestselling author, speaker, novelist and host of the No.1 careers podcast in the UK, Ctrl Alt Delete. She also writes a weekly newsletter called “The Hyphen’ and runs a book club, The Hyphen Book Club.