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Table of Contents
About The Book
From an award-winning writer whose work Roxane Gay calls “utterly unique and remarkable” comes a surreal novel about a woman in Silicon Valley who must decide how much she’s willing to give up for success—for fans of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and Her Body and Other Parties.
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 houseless 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 her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. 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.
About The Author
Photograph by Brandon Taylor
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.
Why We Love It
“Reading Ripe felt like stumbling upon Eden’s forbidden fruit: a key to unlocking language I didn’t have to describe those dark nights of the soul but also the tender moments of love and desire that help us survive them. Sarah Rose Etter brilliantly contrasts the absurdities of modern life with an unsettling element of surrealism—a black hole that stalks our protagonist through her soul-sucking start-up job. The plot cuts like a knife through the protective exocarp of a pomegranate to its bloody center, from the ergosphere surrounding a black hole over its event horizon, hurtling you toward the mysterious singularity at its center. When you make it there and back (a guarantee fiction offers us that deep space cannot), don’t be surprised if life feels a little different, here on the other side of Ripe.”
—Emily P., Assistant Editor, on Ripe
Product Details
- Publisher: Scribner (July 11, 2023)
- Length: 288 pages
- ISBN13: 9781668011638
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Raves and Reviews
"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
Resources and Downloads
High Resolution Images
- Book Cover Image (jpg): Ripe Hardcover 9781668011638
- Author Photo (jpg): Sarah Rose Etter Photograph by Brandon Taylor(0.1 MB)
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