Sometimes, the first line of a novel is so arresting it stops you in your tracks – whoa, you think, we’re in for a wild ride. The opening of Emily Slapper’s debut novel, Everyone I Know Is Dying, does exactly this: “I hope the lights are on when we finally have sex, so he can see how young I am compared to his wife.”
In those first few words, we think we see a disconnected, deeply narcissistic first-person narrator. For better and for worse, though, Slapper isn’t quite able to maintain the dynamic.
Our pretty, clever and flirtatious protagonist, Iris, has moved to London with the usual hopes and dreams. In the big city, she’s certain she will finally discover her true self and become the person she’s always wanted to be: confident, sexy, rich, with all the accoutrements that wealth can bring, and, most importantly, she will be skinny. Besides her job at some sort of online magazine, there’s nothing Iris works harder at than being thin. Calories are counted, meals are skipped, gauntness is celebrated – “My stomach aches with emptiness, but it focuses me. It drives me. I enjoy it.”
Aside from this, Iris is hoping to gain a promotion, which would make her the youngest manager in the team. Then all her hopes and dreams will have been realised. Won’t they?
But when the promotion arrives, Iris falls apart. The intense pressure she’s put herself under to be the “right” sort of person has taken a huge toll and, combined with her starvation diet, her mental health further deteriorates. The depressive episode causes her to question everything she’s believed. She quits her job and imagines sinking into her mattress: “I cry until I lose my breath, stare gormlessly into space, picture the bliss of being able to turn my existence off.”
Her housemate, and recent boyfriend, George the unemployed chef, takes her breakdown in his stride. He’s caring and thoughtful, almost too nice. He cooks food for her and makes her endless cups of tea. Iris enjoys the attention, until she worries that she’s settling down, and her future with George will be nothing but the deathly contentment of a secure relationship: “There’s a reason fairy tales always finish after the wedding. Eating dinner with someone for 50 years isn’t romantic, it’s drip torture. No, it’s not. It’s self-harm.” So, when Iris meets the gorgeous, mysterious Patrick, she takes up with him as well, hiding her mental illness from him and dumping it all on George when she returns home.
The novel tackles a lot of important issues: anorexia nervosa, depression and anxiety, the pressures exerted on people to maintain ridiculous beauty standards, the limiting and liberating effects of monogamy, betrayal and familial duty. Slapper aims for honest, unflinching portrayals of these things, yet the story remains mostly in the shallows. It’s hard to ascertain whether the lack of depth is intentional or if Slapper couldn’t quite tame the style, tone and character of the work to also hold space for richer interiority.
Uneven in places, but certainly very readable, Everyone I Know Is Dying is a coming-of-age novel for Generation Z; although by the end, Iris finishes up slightly short of reaching full maturity, finding a possibility for salvation not through her own strength and self-worth, but through the love of a good man.
Everyone I Know Is Dying, by Emily Slapper (HarperCollins, $36.99), is out now.
