Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Huffington Post, Kirkus, and more * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * A Roxane Gay Audacious Book Club Selection * A Marie Claire Book Club Pick A surreal novel with ""a dark, delicious edge"" (Time) about a woman in Silicon Valley who must decide how much she's willing to give up for success--from an award-winning writer whose work Roxane Gay calls ""utterly unique and remarkable."" A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley start-up, Cassie finds herself trapped in a corporate nightmare. Between the long hours, toxic bosses, and unethical projects, she also struggles to reconcile the glittering promise of a city where obscene wealth lives alongside abject poverty and suffering. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of unhoused people bathing in the bay. 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, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, growing or shrinking 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 she ends up unexpectedly pregnant at the same time her CEO's demands cross into illegal territory, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. ""Lurid, tense, and compelling"" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Ripe portrays one millennial woman's journey through our late-stage capitalist hellscape and offers a brilliantly incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

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9781668011645

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Reviews

"""Ripe has a dark, delicious edge."" --TIME ""An explosive narrative of a woman coming undone as the world burns. . . . A deliciously bitter irony pervades. . . . A scathing look at corporate greed and its many dire consequences, this is deeply felt and cathartic."" --Publishers Weekly (starred review) ""A lurid, tense, and compelling novel. . . . Etter builds a lush and decaying landscape around a woman with an impossible affliction."" --Kirkus (starred review) ""Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe begins with an evisceration of contemporary San Francisco, laid to waste by the tech industry. . . . [A] surreal book."" --Bustle, Most Anticipated Books of Spring & Summer 2023 ""A tremendous story . . . Etter treads a fine line between gothic horror and dystopian fiction, snaring Cassie somewhere between our own lived reality and an uncanny, colorless future that is closer than it may seem. . . . Etter is at her best when carving firm lines around this anguish, a relentless haunting that articulates the pure horror of having a body and licensing others to own it."" --The Sewanee Review ""[Ripe] manages to skewer workplace politics and the vacuousness of modern existence in a way that makes it feel like a fresh subject. . . . Etter captures the cruel facts of San Francisco well: the dystopia that that eden-like setting has turned into."" --LitHub ""[A] sharp and unsettling look into capitalist modern life."" --Brit + CO ""Author of cult classic The Book of X, Sarah Rose Etter, comes back with another slightly twisted tale."" --Her Campus, Most Anticipated Books of 2023 ""Sarah Rose Etter is a wonder, and this novel is a knife to the heart."" --Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties ""Ripe is exactly the kind of book I want to read: astoundingly bold, terrifically haunting, and deeply human. Etter refuses to pull any punches here, asking us to look directly at the nightmares we sometimes agree to live with in exchange for comfort and security. Reading this book felt like pressing repeatedly on a bruise; the most pleasurable kind of pain. Ripe is a dazzlingly gorgeous novel and Sarah Rose Etter is truly one hell of a writer."" --Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things ""HOLY SHIT, this book wrecked me!"" --Samantha Irby, New York Times bestselling author of Wow, No Thank You. ""Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe has the most exquisitely described dread I've read in ages. I couldn't put this book down. Totally haunting and propulsive."" --Halle Butler, author of The New Me ""I was sucked into this novel like a black hole. Ripe is brilliant--a distinctive, sharp, engrossing window into late-stage capitalism. My face melted into this book."" --Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead ""Sarah Rose Etter is electric on everything from tech culture's toxic absurdities to bone-deep loneliness to the science of black holes. Ripe is a harrowing and mordantly hilarious send-up of the horrors of late-stage capitalism, and a potent meditation on the search for meaning in a broken world."" --Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel ""Ripe is a triumph--blade-sharp and unflinching. It walks a darkly gorgeous tightrope between the bitter and beautiful with skill that takes your breath away."" --Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure ""Pascal reportedly had an 'abyss, ' the sense of a precipice yawning on his left-hand side. Cassie, a lexophile marketing writer at a hustle-culture startup, has a similar affliction--or is it a gift? Ripe is enveloping, a bleakly funny surrealist/realist tale of everyday corruption and panic, and what to do when the void winks at you."" --Elisa Gabbert, author of The Unreality of Memory ""Freaky and fresh, Ripe is a brilliant creature of a book. It is visceral and alive, pumping with blood and juice. A beautiful tangle of wit and tenderness."" --Ella Baxter, author of New Animal"

"""Ripe has a dark, delicious edge."" --TIME ""An explosive narrative of a woman coming undone as the world burns. . . . A deliciously bitter irony pervades. . . . A scathing look at corporate greed and its many dire consequences, this is deeply felt and cathartic."" --Publishers Weekly (starred review) ""A lurid, tense, and compelling novel. . . . Etter builds a lush and decaying landscape around a woman with an impossible affliction."" --Kirkus (starred review) ""[An] astonishing tour de force. . . . Masterfully juxtaposing 'wild amounts of wealth' with 'extreme poverty and displacement, ' Etter examines deep inequities in an image obsessed, capitalist society. Her biting social commentary layers horror with dark comedy, using vivid imagery and striking language to great effect."" --Booklist (starred review) ""Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe begins with an evisceration of contemporary San Francisco, laid to waste by the tech industry. . . . [A] surreal book."" --Bustle, Most Anticipated Books of Spring & Summer 2023 ""A fresh voice, Etter, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel for The Book of X, will undoubtedly cement her place in the literary scene with this one."" --Zibby Owens, Good Morning America ""A haunting coming-of-age story set in a Silicon Valley startup hellscape."" --Nylon ""Etter opens Ripe with an onslaught of visceral imagery that stays at a fever pitch all the way through. . . . In a weird way, reading Ripe feels like being hit over the head with a cast-iron frying pan, then willingly going back for more. . . . clear-eyed . . . harrowing . . . powerful."" --San Francisco Chronicle ""Etter dives deep into the promises of capitalistic pursuits and their terrifying, if not deadly, costs."" --PopSugar ""A tremendous story . . . Etter treads a fine line between gothic horror and dystopian fiction, snaring Cassie somewhere between our own lived reality and an uncanny, colorless future that is closer than it may seem. . . . Etter is at her best when carving firm lines around this anguish, a relentless haunting that articulates the pure horror of having a body and licensing others to own it."" --The Sewanee Review ""[Ripe] manages to skewer workplace politics and the vacuousness of modern existence in a way that makes it feel like a fresh subject. . . . Etter captures the cruel facts of San Francisco well: the dystopia that that eden-like setting has turned into."" --LitHub ""At once grim and playful, Ripe succeeds where other dystopian novels sometimes fail, by emphasizing the personal and particular agony of a single frazzled rat in the capitalist maze."" --Philadelphia Inquirer ""A harrowing account of a woman repeatedly degraded within a workforce that promises to herald a better world. . . . Ripe encapsulates a profound journey of self-realization. . . . Etter reveals the continued potency of surrealism, which breathes life into the vivid expression of our contemporary reality."" --Brooklyn Rail ""[A] sharp and unsettling look into capitalist modern life."" --Brit + CO ""Author of cult classic The Book of X, Sarah Rose Etter, comes back with another slightly twisted tale."" --Her Campus, Most Anticipated Books of 2023 ""Sarah Rose Etter is a wonder, and this novel is a knife to the heart."" --Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties ""Ripe is exactly the kind of book I want to read: astoundingly bold, terrifically haunting, and deeply human. Etter refuses to pull any punches here, asking us to look directly at the nightmares we sometimes agree to live with in exchange for comfort and security. Reading this book felt like pressing repeatedly on a bruise; the most pleasurable kind of pain. Ripe is a dazzlingly gorgeous novel and Sarah Rose Etter is truly one hell of a writer."" --Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things ""HOLY SHIT, this book wrecked me!"" --Samantha Irby, New York Times bestselling author of Wow, No Thank You. ""Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe has the most exquisitely described dread I've read in ages. I couldn't put this book down. Totally haunting and propulsive."" --Halle Butler, author of The New Me ""I was sucked into this novel like a black hole. Ripe is brilliant--a distinctive, sharp, engrossing window into late-stage capitalism. My face melted into this book."" --Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead ""Sarah Rose Etter is electric on everything from tech culture's toxic absurdities to bone-deep loneliness to the science of black holes. Ripe is a harrowing and mordantly hilarious send-up of the horrors of late-stage capitalism, and a potent meditation on the search for meaning in a broken world."" --Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel ""Ripe is a triumph--blade-sharp and unflinching. It walks a darkly gorgeous tightrope between the bitter and beautiful with skill that takes your breath away."" --Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure ""Pascal reportedly had an 'abyss, ' the sense of a precipice yawning on his left-hand side. Cassie, a lexophile marketing writer at a hustle-culture startup, has a similar affliction--or is it a gift? Ripe is enveloping, a bleakly funny surrealist/realist tale of everyday corruption and panic, and what to do when the void winks at you."" --Elisa Gabbert, author of The Unreality of Memory ""Freaky and fresh, Ripe is a brilliant creature of a book. It is visceral and alive, pumping with blood and juice. A beautiful tangle of wit and tenderness."" --Ella Baxter, author of New Animal"

"""Etter opens Ripe with an onslaught of visceral imagery that stays at a fever pitch all the way through. . . . In a weird way, reading Ripe feels like being hit over the head with a cast-iron frying pan, then willingly going back for more. . . . clear-eyed . . . harrowing . . . powerful."" --San Francisco Chronicle ""Etter tells this gothic tale of twenty-first-century anomie, isolation, and despair in potent, fast-paced passages that are rich with fairytale-esque drama and sharp with parable-esque restraint. . . . cathartic, addictive, delicious."" --Chicago Review of Books ""A poignantly tragic, absurdist view of the 'late-capitalist hellscape' that is grind culture. . . . [A] glorious sucker punch of a second novel. . . . It's a razor-sharp commentary on the relentlessness of tech culture and millennial striver conditioning."" --Shondaland ""[An] astonishing tour de force. . . . Masterfully juxtaposing 'wild amounts of wealth' with 'extreme poverty and displacement, ' Etter examines deep inequities in an image obsessed, capitalist society. Her biting social commentary layers horror with dark comedy, using vivid imagery and striking language to great effect."" --Booklist (starred review) ""A fresh voice, Etter, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel for The Book of X, will undoubtedly cement her place in the literary scene with this one."" --Zibby Owens, Good Morning America ""HOLY SHIT, this book wrecked me!"" --Samantha Irby, New York Times bestselling author of Quietly Hostile ""A lurid, tense, and compelling novel. . . . Etter builds a lush and decaying landscape around a woman with an impossible affliction."" --Kirkus (starred review) ""Sarah Rose Etter is a wonder, and this novel is a knife to the heart."" --Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties ""An absolute must read if you love an unravelling main protagonist. . . . Unsettling, tense, and funny . . . we think you'll love this one."" --Glamour (UK) ""Ripe has a dark, delicious edge."" --TIME ""Sharp . . . absorbing . . . unforgettable . . . Etter's exquisite prose powers the book. . . . [She] expertly diverts the novel from neat or didactic tropes. . . . [and] accomplishes what we seek in fiction: a deeply human connection.""--New York Times Book Review ""A dark look at the underbelly of capitalism. . . . Sarah Rose Etter is a prophet for the sad girls."" --NYLON ""A novel like no other. . . . Etter's work is undoubtedly surreal, but then so is American life today. She knows how to channel its contradictions because she lives them. . . . Ripe hits very close to home."" --Los Angeles Times ""A masterclass in creating tension. . . . This is the kind of novel that reminds us that the apocalypse is now. Dystopia is here."" --Roxane Gay ""An explosive narrative of a woman coming undone as the world burns. . . . A deliciously bitter irony pervades. . . . A scathing look at corporate greed and its many dire consequences, this is deeply felt and cathartic."" --Publishers Weekly (starred review) ""At once grim and playful, Ripe succeeds where other dystopian novels sometimes fail, by emphasizing the personal and particular agony of a single frazzled rat in the capitalist maze."" --Philadelphia Inquirer ""An existential page-turner . . . super dark and very funny . . . Etter yanks you into Cassie's deep, meaningless void, and I've never had a more enjoyable time wading through this specific level of hell."" --Jezebel"

Author Information

Sarah Rose Etter is the author of the chapbook Tongue Party and The Book of X, winner of a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. Her work has appeared in Time, Guernica, BOMB, the Bennington Review, The Cut, VICE, and elsewhere. She has been awarded residences at the Jack Kerouac House, the Disquiet International program in Portugal, and the Gullkistan in Iceland. She earned her BA in English from Pennsylvania State University and her MFA in fiction from Rosemont College. She lives in Los Angeles. For more info, visit SarahRoseEtter.com.

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