Chrysalis

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They’re creepy and cheerful, like cheap actors in advertisements, ones for laundry detergent maybe, or pasta sauce in a jar.

It goes to show, no matter what you decide to do, people will have problems with your decisions, whether it’s leaving your job, leaving your partner, leaving all of humanity behind, so do what gives you peace of mind and let those who don’t like it sit in their discomfort. Like it’s one of those books like I’m sure 10% readers love and say that anyone who doesn’t love it just doesn’t “get” it. but we never learn to whom these first-person narrations are addressed or the actual event that has necessitated them as there is no clear interlocutor - they are internal monologues suggesting possible others. The central character’s behaviour is compellingly odd, and the sinister undercurrent running through the novel from the start is really effective - leaving you with the sense that, though you can’t entirely identify just what has happened, something dark is going on. The protagonist is difficult to like and I usually prefer to be more invested in the characters, but there’s something about her that keeps you reading.Postmodern speed and complexity are juxtaposed with slowness and simplicity, so ideas that are valued by the mindfulness movement, but which, at least in this story, aren't the solution either. She fixes her gaze on a point above the camera, chin poised, and the light falls down in a soft pattern, the shadows of leaves moving over her neck. Each of her narrators is witness to an aspect of the nameless woman’s transformation from floundering, and possibly traumatised, to seemingly-invulnerable colossus. A strange story about an unnamed woman undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts, observed by three different people, all once important people in this woman’s life. They’ll come in with some child’s accessory—kids’ headphones, a miniature water bottle, a towel with cat ears.

She was like a rare painting, some subtle work of genius, a thing that no one knew to look at until the expert told them it was there. Hotjar sets this cookie to know whether a user is included in the data sampling defined by the site's pageview limit. Taking on questions of femininity and expectation, as well as social media and its ability to make a cult leader of anyone, Chrysalis raises as many questions as it answers about our society and our place within it. Han Kang’s The Vegetarian is a clear influence, and I also thought of the end of Richard Powers’ The Overstory – female characters, merging with plants, find respite in obliteration. Her short fiction has been published in The Best of British Short Stories, The Dublin Review, and Lighthouse Journal, among other places, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize and the Sunday Times Short Story Award.Is the version of a person you see, the real them, or are you projecting and just seeing what you wish to see?