Ripe: Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling - one millennial woman’s journey through our late-capitalist hellscape

** A TIME Magazine Must-Read Book of 2023 **

A year into her dream job at a cutthroat Silicon Valley startup, 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. Ivy League grads complain about the snack selection from a conference room with a view of houseless people bathing in the bay. Startup 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 dismal precipice, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are worth the pain, or succumb to the black hole.

Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through our late-capitalist hellscape and offers a brilliantly incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

'An absolute must read... Unsettling, tense and funny' - Glamour

'Exquisite' - New York Times

'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 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

'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

'Reading this book felt like pressing repeatedly on a bruise; the most pleasurable kind of pain... Sarah Rose Etter is truly one hell of a writer' - Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things

'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

'Holy shit, this book wrecked me!' - Samantha Irby, author of Wow, No Thank You

'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

'Ripe is enveloping, a bleakly funny surrealist/realist tale of everyday corruption and panic, the "train of fucking life", and what to do when the void winks at you' - Elisa Gabbert, author of Normal Distance

© 2023 Verve Books (Ebook): 9780857308528

Release date

Ebook: 8 August 2023