Esther is Now Following You <\/p>\n
Author: Tanya Sweeney<\/p>\n
ISBN-13: 978-0-8575-0792-1<\/p>\n
Publisher: Transworld<\/p>\n
Guideline Price: \u20ac14.99<\/p>\n
Many elements of Tanya Sweeney\u2019s 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 \u201chandsome jaw\u201d) escapes to Toronto to insert herself into Mark Ruffalo\u2019s life, Stephen King-style.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s by using these tropes, however, that Sweeney manages to catapult us so swiftly into Esther\u2019s head, making her relatable in a snap. Whether Esther\u2019s frustrated with her mother or slathering coconut oil on her toes, she\u2019s a lot like us. Which means that when she has a miscarriage and starts stalking actor Ted Levy, our stomachs lurch. <\/p>\n
The novel is set in 2010, when X was a fledgling and Facebook ruled the roost. At 37, Esther suddenly has unprecedented access \u2013 she sends Ted sexy selfies \u2013 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. \u201cFace like a fucking dropped pavlova,\u201d Esther tweets at Ted\u2019s girlfriend.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s interesting to experience the novel\u2019s 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. \u201cNever in the history of humankind,\u201d she yells at her husband, \u201chas a man told a woman to calm the fuck down and it\u2019s actually had the desired effect.\u201d Face it: Esther\u2019s bolder and more wittily calibrated than us, and using her as a mirror of our own desperation is itself an insidious act. We\u2019re as bad as she is. <\/p>\n
Although much of \u201cEsther\u201d is by the indie playbook (urban beekeepers in Toronto, Swedish supermodels who eat like orca whales), there are occasional, unusual gems, like the \u201cbrief, fluttering cicada of a moment\u201d when Esther discovers she\u2019s pregnant. It\u2019s also easy to underestimate the discipline that goes into a narrative that zips, and this one is a joyride that\u2019s challenging not to finish in one go. It will grip you, even when it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Mei Chin is a writer from New York living in Dublin <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Esther is Now Following You Author: Tanya Sweeney ISBN-13: 978-0-8575-0792-1 Publisher: Transworld Guideline Price: \u20ac14.99 Many elements of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6489,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-283394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-book-reviews","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}