Isla's parents dying in a "freak" car crash. I'm sure it wasn't planned? (reeks of needing to get the word count up??!) It’s a very realistic story. Everyone has problems, each choice brings its own set of issues. No one is always likeable. I think so many women will see themselves in this book. I could definitely connect to that feeling of being "behind" and separate - the description of Olive being with a group of mothers feeling outside their bond and with nothing to contribute to the conversation is so perfect. We don't see characters like Olive in books or media and it's a breath of fresh air to have her here - it will mean a lot to many I'm sure. And it’s ok that she’s still figuring it all out, navigating her world without a compass. But life comes with expectations, there are choices to be made and – sometimes – stereotypes to fulfil. So when her best friends’ lives branch away towards marriage and motherhood, leaving the path they’ve always followed together, she starts to question her choices – because life according to Olive looks a little bit different. Thankfully the book isn't just about not wanting kids. It's also about getting them and wondering why you did it; getting them and losing your husband in the process; getting them and realising that maybe your husband wasn't quite so committed, and failing to get them and getting absolutely obsessed about that absence in your life.

And then. Suddenly it’s a soap opera where characters get upset with each other because someone decides to make different life choices than they do??? A journalist takes the whole book (months and eventually YEARS) to write an article she doesn’t even publish??? Friends treat each other like crap and then suddenly it’s all ok because they have dinner together??? Olive gets a promotion out of nowhere??? She and her boyfriend can afford a nice house in Soho???? What is this universe??? This was fantastic and super relatable. I was gripped from beginning to end. Again it's the kind of contemporary fiction I love - character driven and about the lives of ordinary people. It centres on Olive, a woman of 33 who does not want kids. She's just broken up with her boyfriend of nine years because he wants a family. Surrounding Olive are her 3 best friends she's known since school - Bea, Isla and Cec. The decisions the women make as they grow up, and the differences between them, make up most of the plot. This is another anthology collection from some of the world’s best essayists all in one place. OLIVE is about the crossroads and milestones of a 30-something woman’s life, but I am always wanting to read stories from women who are older and wiser than I am. This book includes 15 different essays from brilliant writers in their 40s on the topics of age, nostalgia, family, motherhood and friendship. I loved reading from women who have children, tried to have children, or didn’t want them, showing there are many different ways to live a fulfilled life. It’s a book I know I’ll re-read again and again. Dinner With Edward, Isabel Vincent She's jealous, judgemental and selfish towards her friends and those around her - snippy comments about Cec's luxurious house and baby shower, feeling put upon when helping elderly neighbour Dorothy, complaining that her sister, Zeta, isn't there for her because she's away doing charity work. Speaking of which, why doesn't Olive ever discuss childfree life with Zeta, who is 5 years older and seems not to have kids? One would think she'd be a great sounding board? Why does she keep hounding her poor three friends instead, who are all clearly are pro-kids? There are so many examples of missing commas, which, if you have any sensitivity to how a sentence flows, is incredibly jarring. And it makes the writing read like a high schooler’s first fiction essay.Despite this being an underlying theme of the book, it doesn’t just speak to the women who don’t want to have children. Olive is a warm and honest story that has female friendship at its core. It explores the ebb and flow of female friendship as we age and how it evolves when we’re catapulted into making life changing decisions about our careers, motherhood and marriage.

Overall, Olive promises a lot but doesn’t deliver. I found multiple scenes that made me wince with second-hand embarrassment, and I couldn’t relate to the characters. I was so excited for a book with rep on being childfree that I probably went in with unrealistic expectations 😓 This was a debut novel but it didn’t read like a debut. Gannon is a broadcaster and Webbie nominated podcaster and has written a business book. And it’s probably this self confidence that comes through in her novel. Still, my generation continues desperately to hunt for things to do in the face of the greatest catastrophe some of us (or our children) may live to see. We give up meat and take holidays closer to home, even when we know that if the super-rich cut their emissions to that of the average EU citizen, global emissions would drop by a third. But we can’t make anyone else do anything, so we do what we can, and we justify our choices as being meaningful, bigger than us.

I am almost 33 years old and I am child free by choice. thought I was going to really like this. but I didn't. at all. here are the notes I wrote in my phone as I read this book in one sitting. I devoured this warm hug of a book over one weekend. It's a light read yet nuanced too - sensitively exploring a woman's decision to be child-free. I don't want to forget that we are still young. It's clear that our lives are at a major crossroads. We are no longer sat at the traffic lights, though, everyone is already zooming off in different directions. I wish everyone and everything would slow down just for a moment." Leaving aside for a minute that Olive sounds like a baby-boomer, not a Millennial, what has she been drinking from that’s not a paper cup? Is she wistful for the days of Styrofoam? I'm 'child-free by choice' (CFBC as the books terms it) and I've never found it to be the cause of any drama whatsoever.

There are also several points where Olive as narrator just comes across as monumentally stupid. I cannot think that this is on purpose, for two reasons: 1) it is just not what most writers aim for, especially in commercial fiction and 2) I can’t give Gannon credit for trying to pull a ‘The Idiot’ style move with her POV character. Here are some of the more egregious examples: This is, and I cannot stress this enough, an utterly insane response to have to baby showers, and a nonsensical question from a person with a phone in their hand at all times.Few novels have attempted to tell us what to do in the face of climate catastrophe. Amitav Ghosh has called this “a crisis of imagination”. As Richard Powers writes in his 2018 novel The Overstory, “The world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.” Emma started her career in digital marketing at agencies and then at Condé Nast as social media editor. She has been a columnist for The Times, Telegraph and Courier magazine on the topics of business, creativity and the future of work. The book centres around the titular, Olive, a child-free by choice protagonist. Novel idea, huh! It shouldn’t be the case but it is and Gannon definitely spotted a gap in the market to have this necessary & nuanced conversation.

It was interesting to read this straight after Cho Nam-Joo's Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 which explores similar themes within a different cultural context. The novel depicts a Korean woman's life and the resentment and mental distress that can build from a lifetime of small and large oppressions and misogyny. In Olive, instead, we see a lighter and more optimistic take: what's possible when a woman strays from the well-trodden path laid by centuries of women before her.

Table of Contents

Olive grows increasingly certain of her decision even though she doesn’t get any support from her friends. In fact, being childfree is explored from many different angles. Olive’s friends include Bea who has three children, Cec who has just given birth, and Isla who desperately wants a child but has had difficulty conceiving. This set up gives a rich platform for exploring the issue with loads of different perspectives and experiences in the mix. Unfortunately however, some encounters with fleeting side-characters felt like they were forced within the narrative only to spice up the debate; we have a random childhood friend who relates to Olive how she regrets having her child, bigoted parents who see Olive as less of a person for not contributing to the world’s overpopulation, and an older neighbour who has become estranged from her children. Although the rep is important, I felt awkward about some of these encounters and they didn’t seem to contribute anything to the book other than another perspective on Olive remaining childfree. I listened to this book as an audiobook, and prefered that to reading the book I also have. I heard the writing format is quite british and not edited well. The ending did end cute although it ended with some clichés. I do recommend that you give it a go if you're interested in hearing some thoughts to not wanting children, and what it feels like.