Esther is Now Following You
Author: Tanya Sweeney
ISBN-13: 978-0-8575-0792-1
Publisher: Transworld
Guideline Price: €14.99
Many elements of Tanya Sweeney’s Esther is Now Following You will be familiar to anyone who, in the past decade, has been in the vicinity of a screen. Already plugged as Baby Reindeer meets Fleabag and Marian Keyes, this blackly profane comedy could also be described as Sharon Horgan (the Irish heroine lives in Hackney and has a “handsome jaw”) escapes to Toronto to insert herself into Mark Ruffalo’s life, Stephen King-style.
It’s by using these tropes, however, that Sweeney manages to catapult us so swiftly into Esther’s head, making her relatable in a snap. Whether Esther’s frustrated with her mother or slathering coconut oil on her toes, she’s a lot like us. Which means that when she has a miscarriage and starts stalking actor Ted Levy, our stomachs lurch.
The novel is set in 2010, when X was a fledgling and Facebook ruled the roost. At 37, Esther suddenly has unprecedented access – she sends Ted sexy selfies – to make her fantasies palpable. Digital communication is a boon to novelists; for characters to text, rather than speak, their feelings can have a more rawly poetic, and also nastier, effect. “Face like a fucking dropped pavlova,” Esther tweets at Ted’s girlfriend.
It’s interesting to experience the novel’s events 15 years later, when our relationship with content is even more queasily intimate. The novel unsettles when we have to remind ourselves that Esther is made up. “Never in the history of humankind,” she yells at her husband, “has a man told a woman to calm the fuck down and it’s actually had the desired effect.” Face it: Esther’s bolder and more wittily calibrated than us, and using her as a mirror of our own desperation is itself an insidious act. We’re as bad as she is.
Although much of “Esther” is by the indie playbook (urban beekeepers in Toronto, Swedish supermodels who eat like orca whales), there are occasional, unusual gems, like the “brief, fluttering cicada of a moment” when Esther discovers she’s pregnant. It’s also easy to underestimate the discipline that goes into a narrative that zips, and this one is a joyride that’s challenging not to finish in one go. It will grip you, even when it’s cliche; it will make you laugh, even if you might want to shower afterwards. Sometimes a novel need not be entirely nutritious, and although a show is probably inevitable, Esther the book is worth a binge.
Mei Chin is a writer from New York living in Dublin