There is no framing device, no pretext for their telling us what they know about this woman, and the background is so lightly sketched that it feels neutralised. For Susie this woman is a possible role model, someone to emulate as much as she is someone to nurture. Susie, her ex-colleague and best friend, offers her sanctuary and support as she makes the transition to self-created online phenomenon, posting viral meditation videos that encourage her followers to join her in achieving self-sufficiency by isolating themselves from everyone else in their lives.

Chrysalis , her first novel, is told across three narratives that describe her protagonist’s transformation from three distanced points of view. This is the debut novel of Anna Metcalfe and it is a fascinating and thought provoking read about human metamorphosis. the unnamed woman is elusive until the end, and while sometimes frustrating that i could not get more of a direct glimpse, i think that was the entire meaning. There's Elliot, who watches her transformation from the very beginning at the gym they both attend; her mother, Bella, who struggled to understand her daughter when she was young and can now only watch from a distance as she blossoms; and Susie, a coworker whose empty apartment and lonely existence are reinvigorated when the woman moves in with her. But at the same time, this book isn't really about the woman at all: Instead, it becomes about three people in her orbit, who are drawn to her and find a purpose in her presence.Metcalfe has previously published short stories, and was recently named on Granta magazine’s Best of Young British Novelists list.

His hair was thick and, when he stood beneath the air conditioning unit, it moved in graceful waves. Interestingly this element of her journey is the least developed perhaps because it offers a solution that’s too clearcut, a form of narrative closure Metcalfe’s clearly not prepared to entertain. The frantic scrabble for meaning in the modern world when you have nothing to rely on and nobody depending on you. Chrysalis isn't a book where a lot actually happens, but it nevertheless kept me riveted all the way through with its deeply psychological subject matter and strange, unsettling vibes. Even at a young age, Bella, an artist herself, detects Nicola possesses a unique capacity to effect self change.It's a clever, uncomfortable, modern novel that asks many questions of us and of how we view fellow humans as "content" to consume - the commodification of authenticity, the lure of celebrity. He sees her on her first day in the gym and how she transforms both in the gym and in personal setting… because they start dating. One for all the contemporary fiction lovers, Chrysalis is the story of an unnamed woman, whose actions blur the lines between self care and narcissism. It’s about the different forms of isolation and the effects that come from it, including loneliness, solitude and sometimes, independence. Ranging from online obsession, to mothers and daughters, to the very nature of selfhood, Chrysalis is strange and warm and, crucially, very funny.