Green Dot

September 1, 2023

Inchoate and uncertain of her future at age 24, Hera has a job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet. That's how she meets middle-aged journalist Arthur, with whom she falls messily in love. From a multi-award finalist Australian critic, this debut was preempted in Australia, the UK, and the United States. With a 100,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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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.

November 1, 2023
Sydney twentysomething Hera has long known that a ""real"" job is a trap she wants no part of, but it seems she's finally collected all the degrees she can and should get trapped, so to speak, herself. Perhaps, though she loves her dad, she should even consider moving out of his house. Hera proudly accepts the lowly position of comment moderator for a news outlet, soul-sucking work that she hilariously relates, and meets Arthur, an actual journalist who is understated, funny, older, and, notably, married. Soon they're instant messaging all day from their office computers. It's a testament to Gray's well-honed plotting and writerly sleight-of-hand that, though Hera gives readers a pretty good idea of the entire arc of what will happen between her and Arthur on the first page, we still wonder until nearly the final one, and keep those pages flipping to find out. Hera's friends and colleagues are worthy supporting characters, past family difficulty is exposed with a light hand, and laughs and emotional wallops coexist comfortably, all making for a more-than-promising debut.

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December 15, 2023
After embarking on her first grown-up job, an idealistic 20-something begins an affair with a married colleague. Hera Stephen, 24, lives with her father in Sydney, Australia. She's used grad school to delay adulthood as long as possible, but now it's time for her to join the ranks of her corporate friends and get a "real job." After several disastrously frank interviews, she takes a position as a news organization's comment moderator, where her soul-sucking responsibility is to read, parse, and color-code the vitriol of online discussions. It's at this job that she meets Arthur Jones, a soft-spoken journalist with whom she starts up a message-based flirtation (hence the title, referencing the green dot that indicates a user is online). By the time Hera finds out that Arthur is married, it's already too late--she's enamored. Gray's writing skillfully captures the passion of their early trysts. The sex scenes crackle with energy, and the chemistry between Hera and Arthur is believable and seductive. You may find yourself rooting for them against your better instincts, even as Hera begins to neglect her friends and her delightful, supportive father. As the book tracks the increasingly doomed love affair (including through the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic), the only thing keeping the narrative from devolving into something grim and cynical is Hera's dynamic and snarky voice. She addresses the reader directly at times, preempting any criticism and attempting to mitigate her own bad decisions. Her narration is peppered with references to music and pop culture, the things that define your personality in your 20s, when you're still searching, as Hera is, for some kind of identity. Just as much of the narrative unfolds digitally as it does IRL, and Gray deftly incorporates FaceTime, Instagram, and an unnamed company chat platform into the text. A breezy, heartfelt coming-of-age story for Gen Zers concerned with how to grow up without growing cold.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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.