Our September Ink & Drink book club choice was Ripe, the "glorious sucker punch" second novel from the Shirley Jackson Novel Award winner Sarah Rose Etter.
A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie is trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses and unethical projects, she struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty.
Start-up burnouts leap into the paths of commuter trains and men literally set themselves on fire in the streets. Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, the black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever closer as the world around her unravels.
When her CEO's demands cross an illegal line and her personal life spirals towards a bleak precipice, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are worth the pain, or succumb to the black hole.
Let us help you discover the novel with our Ink & Drink questions:
There was quite a lot of white space in the book, including actual images of white circles on black backgrounds. What do you think was the purpose of this and how was this imagery reflected in the text?
What purpose does Cassie’s ‘research’ serve to the narrative?
The ‘black hole’ follows Cassie not only throughout the narrative, but throughout her life. Do you think she perceives it as more of a threat or a companion?
The darkness of the black hole looms large in this text, does this perhaps encourage us to consider Etter’s work as an example of psychological horror, or haunting surrealism?
Alongside her black hole, Cassie develops an obsession with pomegranates and their various stages of ripeness. What does the imagery of this fruit represent in the novel?
The novel employs a first-person narrative to depict working in Silicon Valley, what Cassie deems to be a ‘corporate nightmare’, what effect does this have on the reader?
What was the significance of the growing black hole? How did this correspond with the ending of the novel?
The novel is divided into many sections, what effect does this fragmented narrative structure have? Is this a reflection or a commentary on the attention span of readers?
Despite her criticism of her co-workers and other characters in the novel, could one perceive Cassie to be a ‘Believer’?
How did you interpret the ending of the novel? What do you imagine for Cassie in the future?
For our next Ink & Drink book club, held on Wednesday October 25th at 6.30pm, we will be reading The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li, described as "a story of intimacy and obsession, friendship and rivalry perfect for fans of Elena Ferrante, Ottessa Moshfegh and Kamila Shamsie". We hope to see you there, and if not, we look forward to sharing our questions with you soon!
About the book:
Fabienne is dead. Her childhood best friend, Agnes, receives the news in America, far from the French countryside where the two girls were raised - the place that Fabienne helped Agnes escape ten years ago. Now, Agnes is free to tell her story.
As children in a backwater town, they'd built a private world, invisible to everyone but themselves - until Fabienne hatched the plan that would change everything, launching Agnes on an epic trajectory through fame, fortune, and terrible loss.
A dark, ravishing tale winding from the rural provinces to Paris, from an English boarding school, to the quiet Pennsylvania home where Agnes can live without her past.