Book 43 of2026

Green Dot - Madeleine Gray

I'm not quite sure why I picked this one up (from Waterstones, Lancaster, book fans), as the cover does not reflect the brilliance of the writing contained within.
With certain exceptions*, I'll only read a book review after I've finished reading, so I came cold to Madeleine Gray.
What a fabulous debut! Ostensibly, Green Dot examines the ennui and spiritual torpor experienced by clever people once the joys of university and academy turn into the world of non-vocational twenty-something working.
It's also the story of loving someone unsuitable.
Nothing new there, of course, but Madeleine Gray's genius lies in capturing the joys and sorrows and angst of the human condition in such a way that for 385 pages, I was Hera Stephen (a minor intellectual gag that none of the reviews felt obliged to mention), an office-working drone in pre and post Covid Sydney.
The writing is brilliant, the jokes are often laugh out loud, but the emotional punch of Hera's yearning and suffering in the last hundred or so pages had me racing through the book, hoping to find out what I needed to find out, and - paradoxically - hoping that the book wouldn't end.
There are lazy comparisons to both Fleabag and Bridget Jones in the accompanying endorsements, but Madeleine Gray is very much her original self.
A fabulous writer and an absolutely brilliant novel.

9.5/10

*The Guardian's two reviews of Green Dot have some merit, but I'm always dubious of any critic who takes their exemplary quote from the first two pages of the book.
**The only Guardian 'pre-reading' review I've seen in the past year was their/somebody's brilliant demolition of Irvine Welsh's 'Men In Love '. I was never going to read 'Begbie and Co Part 26', but I've had sneaky peaks of possibly the worst thing I've ever seen on numerous bookshop visits, and it's lucky that I always carry some wipes around - I almost felt unclean after touching it.