Green Dot

November 13, 2023
Australian writer Gray debuts with the canny story of a 24-year-old woman struggling to be an adult. Throughout her life, Hera never believed in getting a job. In high school, she was a good student but not well liked, and since college she has been living with her father in Sydney, biding her time until she is forced to support herself. Eventually, she’s hired as a “community monitor” for a digital news outlet. During her first week, she’s ignored by the office’s journalists and counts down the hours as she moderates online comments. Hera’s dull routine brightens after an encounter with a manager named Arthur
in the elevator, where she decides to “cannonball into conversation.” Hoping to make an impression, she asks him, “Who do you hate most in the office?” Arthur responds later via DM, their chatting leads to drinks, and they begin an affair. Hera falls for him and develops an obsession, which only grows stronger as Arthur refuses to leave his wife. Hera is vibrantly written, and Gray thankfully provides her narration with enough distance for self-clarity (“It is possible that my dedication to this relationship was in fact a dedication to my belief in myself”). Gray’s unflinching bildungsroman is great fun.

August 15, 2023
Madeline Gray’s debut novel, Green Dot, which has enjoyed a lot of pre-publication buzz, is a surprising read. With some superficial markers of the recently popular ‘sad girl’ novel—particularly in the first quarter, where the main character, 20-something Hera, is self-indulgent and unlikeable—I found that it was a bit flat to start. But not for long. When we meet Hera (ironically, the Greek name for the goddess of marriage and family), she is an overly qualified arts student, living with her father and looking for something—or someone—to attach to. Instead of being an active Instagram ‘green dot’ in her life, Hera is more like a thumb hovering over an aimless scrolling screen, and the reader wouldn’t be blamed for ‘shutting down’. However, Green Dot has heart, and gathers pace when Hera joins a media company as an online community moderator (her acerbic observations of office life and her colleagues are laugh-out-loud funny), and enters into a relationship with the married 40-something Arthur. The affair plot should be cliched and bland, but the biting honesty of Hera’s commentary and the surrounding dialogue make it relatable, grimly funny and engaging. It’s tempting to assume that this novel is just for the younger demographic of Sally Rooney and Dolly Alderton fans, but the unrelenting dissection of unrequited love and forensic insight into the world of affairs gives Green Dot a universal appeal to anyone curious about the human condition.