Only Ever Yours, by Louise O'Neill

[rachelmanija]

The books which were able to break my reading block all shared a compelling, propulsive, page-turning quality, including this one. That is how I came to read what is possibly the single bleakest book I've ever read. It's very very good and I'm glad I read it, but... be warned.

Only Ever Yours is more of a satire/allegory of sexism, misogyny, beauty culture, and the maddeningly contradictory things we tell teenage girls and then judge for failing to do perfectly than a dystopia that could really happen. But consider it on any basis other than "is this a plausible extrapolation of the future," which it clearly isn't supposed to be, and it's horrifyingly realistic on its own terms.

In this horrendous post-apocalyptic world, frieda is a teenage girl being raised with other girls in a nightmarish school which is supposed to teach them to be perfect and beautiful so they can be given to men. It goes to every possible length to brainwash them to ensure that they won't ever rebel, let alone band together to do so, or even be kind to each other. There's no rebellion to overthrow the system, but there are some small and personal ones, in a world where choosing not to be cruel is a rebellion in itself.

The lack of capital letters on the girls' names (boys get them) is probably the least of the relentless detailing of how this society (our society, exaggerated) crushes girls and women, and prods and pushes them to crush themselves and each other. They must maintain a designated weight, but eat in a cafeteria where the Fatgirl Buffet always waits as a public temptation. Audio tapes play all night telling them they're worthless if they're not thin and perfect. They have regular sessions where they're told to critique each others' bodies. Even the flowers (as artificial as everything in this setting) have mirrors in their centers.

In the middle of all this horror is frieda, desperately grasping for love and acceptance, isabel, destroying herself for reasons frieda doesn't understand, and megan, who understands the rules and plays by them as hard as she can. All three of them are heartbreakingly human in a system designed to strip them of humanity.

Here are two excellent short fanfics, both distinctly more cheerful than the novel.

I'm the New Blue-Blood, by atheilen. megan carves out a life for herself after the book.

We All Have Our Favorites, by scioscribe. A very satisfying and even comforting fix-it, though fix-it in the context of the book is still incredibly dark.

Only Ever Yours

Comments

[scioscribe]

So, so incredibly bleak and yet so compelling--it's really impressive to me how the worldbuilding isn't realistic in the sense of being extrapolative/plausible but still manages to feel real because it's so internally consistent and well-thought-out in all its little horrible details and the way they affect the characters.

"I'm the New Blue-Blood" is absolutely fantastic, and I always cling to the future it sets up for megan.

[rachelmanija]

It's not realism but it's a perfectly detailed distorted mirror. The Fatgirl Buffet and the soundtrack of self-hatred is the kind of metaphor that's just barely removed from reality.

[anna_wing]

I worked in New York City twenty years ago, and did a little bit of travelling around the country. It was startling even then how New York was the only place where I saw what I would consider normal-sized people regularly - healthy BMI, not particularly athletic, usually no more than slightly overweight. I lived in Manhattan, so probably most people were foreigners anyway...Everywhere else I went, the majority of people were either obese/morbidly obese, or very thin or toned in an obviously deliberate way. I won't go into the attitudes to food, which were not what I would consider normal or healthy either.

I'm told by younger friends who've spent time there more recently that it's even worse now. I know there's even a very perverse movement that treats being dangerously obese as some sort of political gesture against patriarchy. It's really very sad.

[naath]

so, a trilogy... Handmaid's Tale, Only Ever Yours, and ?????

[autopope]

Obviously Vox by Christina Dalcher. (First novel, with first-novel flaws. Also, very dystopian, much misogyny, can't talk, wow.)

[eglantiere]

i wish there were detailed plot recaps for horror books the way there are for horror movies. because i kinda want to know! i, judging by scioscribe's fix-it fic as an upgrade on the overall happiness of the book, don't want to find out :D:

[jesuswasbatman]

Sounds oddly parallel to the comic series Bitch Planet, which came out around the same time.

[deborahjross]

Sounds fascinating, especially the use of lower case for women's names. Thoughtful use of craft.

[mildred_of_midgard]

That is how I came to read what is possibly the single bleakest book I've ever read. It's very very good and I'm glad I read it, but... be warned.

Oh, holy cow, you weren't kidding. That ending. D:

It *was* good! It was very gripping. And somehow, despite your warning, I kept hoping against hope...now I need to check out that fix-it fic.

Am I too cynical to think that in a society structured like this one, a man wouldn't *have* to defend hitting his "companion" any more than a plantation owner had to defend whipping his slaves back in the day? I can see the woman lying to hide her own failure to please him, but I don't see him having to defend himself publicly. I realize that entire scene is a callout to today's society, and that it ties in with Darwin's father, but...unlike the cooking and sewing, which are lampshaded as callouts to the modern day, the wife-beating scene struck me as a little optimistic. But maybe I'm a cynic.

[rachelmanija]

Oh, I'm glad you read it! Definitely read the "fix-it" and report back.

I totally agree about the beatings.