Chrysalis

Product Information

Having suffered trauma growing up and an abusive relationship as an adult, a young woman sets out to radically transform herself via things like weightlifting and yoga. How extreme? Here she is, a gal I'll call Nicola, from the Greek, meaning “victorious,” as seen through the eyes of - Like the best of literary fiction, in my view, this novel is mostly about interiority, is compelling and beautifully written, I will be thinking about the issues it raises long after I have closed the cover. What more can you ask of a book? Ms Metcalfe has been selected by the literary magazine, Granta, as one of its promising young, new British novelists, it was this list that first introduced me to her.

This story is a bit of an odd one - the central plot follows an unnamed woman who becomes an online wellness cult leader and is told through the perspectives of three outsiders, which is an interesting conceit as, by nature, all three of the narrators paint incomplete and unreliable pictures of the protagonist. My main gripe is with the writing style - the protagonist being unnamed is so unnecessary and makes it annoying to read as the narrators constantly refer to "she" and "her" - it comes across as a lazy way to make the character seem more mysterious. I also could have done without a lot of the superfluous details (especially from the first narrator) - I skimmed over a lot of mundane text. By far the strongest was the second narrator, the protagonist's mother, as the third narrator hardly appeared to have any point of view at all. Metcalfe was shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award in 2014 for “Number Three”, a story that later appeared in her first collection of short stories, Blind Water Pass, published by John Murray in 2016. It's just Bella and Nicola – no husband/father nor siblings. Even at a young age, Bella, an artist herself, detects Nicola possesses a unique capacity to effect self change.

Success!

Susie, a work colleague, supports the protagonist when she leaves her dysfunctional relationship and her job at a law firm. Susie watches the woman develop her autonomy and train herself to be as still as possible through meditation. Her resilience becomes performative as she posts videos and launches a career as a cult figure who embraces solitude. In the end, our main character decides to cut out all relationships and focuses on not just slow living but slow moving; she is able to hold a yoga pose for hours on end. Through her dedication and YouTube videos, she amasses a small cult following who follows her lead and rejects society--perhaps, in a way, the only way a woman can be truly safe in this world? An unnerving, compelling and utterly contemporary debut novel about one woman's metamorphosis into an online phenomenon, from a Sunday Times Short Story Award-shortlisted writer. She is watched by Elliot as he trains in the gym. He notices her dedication to building her body and taking up space, and he is drawn to her strength. She is observed by her mother, as she grows from a taciturn, tremulous child into a determined and distant woman, who severs all familial ties. She is observed by her former colleague Susie, who offers her sanctuary and support as she leaves her partner and her job and rebuilds her life, transforms her body, and reinvents herself online. Each of these three witnesses to the woman desires closeness. Each is left with only the husk of who she was before she became someone else: a woman on a singular and solitary path with the power to inspire and to influence her followers, for good and ill. An oblique, intimate novel told in lucid, beguiling prose, Chrysalis a story about solitude and selfhood, and about the blurred line between self-care and narcissism. It is about controlling the body and the mind, about the place of the individual within society and what is means when someone choses to leave society behind. It is strikingly contemporary story about the search for answers and those we trust to give them to us.

JA: There are so many systems that hold us all. It reminds me of when you were talking about buying a new dress; like do we really have to transform our whole selves? It feels like you’re chasing this other version of yourself that never really actually exists, but for a brief period of time you can pretend like if you do this one thing, you will. There’s a measure of fleeting joy to be found in that. Sometimes when you give readers loads of details, I feel like you give them a to-do list of things to imagine, whereas if you give them two details, their minds will fill in the rest. And they will feel more invested because of that, because they have co-created it with you.” Living online and offlineHer artist mother Bella describes her relationship to the sometimes fearful and volatile child she sought to soothe, and her former colleague Susie bears witness to the protagonist’s toxic relationship with a man she met at work before she quits her job (and boyfriend) and embarks on her mysterious metamorphosis. But to what end? Through the three point of view we basically piece together who the character is and her motivation behind her transformation. I loved that the author took us through each stage, even though it wasn’t told the character herself and I think that is what made it very intriguing. It was interesting to watch these people latch onto this woman and her own seemingly unfeeling attitude toward them. Each narrator has their own idealized view of who she is, and they can’t compute when she doesn’t fit in that box. JA: In the gym, too, the themes of gender and power are introduced. I love that the main character wears a full-on blouse to the gym and is fine with it, and doesn’t move when the trainer encourages her to stretch on the mats.

Metcalfe, who teaches creative writing at the University of Birmingham, set her students a timed writing exercise in the classroom: to invent their own “recalcitrant or hard to pin down” protagonist and then describe that character through three different points of view in 20 minutes. She sat down to do the same exercise alongside her students, and Chrysalis was born. “I’ve really borrowed my whole structure from Han Kang, hopefully not in an exercise of plagiarism but more in literary adoration,” she says cheerfully, when we meet for tea near London Bridge. The gym setting is particularly apt, not only because the woman is intent on changing her body but also because, as Metcalfe observes: “[Gyms] are really strange places where people spend much longer than usual watching themselves, because there are mirrors everywhere, but also anxiously watching other people… it’s an interesting social environment.” Taking on questions of femininity and expectation, as well as social media and its ability to make a cult leader of anyone, Chrysalis raises as many questions as it answers about our society and our place within it.” — Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2023 It was good to look at her. Everything about her suggested power and strength. Her form was perfect. The angles were precise, rounded neatly at the corners by the muscle she’d built. Her hair was looped in a knot at the top of her head. Plant-like tendrils drifted down around her face. She did everything slowly, taking long deep breaths, working through the difficult transitions with grace and ease. A new song started playing. Chrysalis is a savvy exploration of one woman’s desire to inspire others, and how self-presentation can tip into obsession. Although Metcalfe’s three perspectives offer a nuanced portrait of an online sensation, they are similar in tone. Her health guru rises from the ashes of an abusive relationship, but also discards those who’ve outgrown their use. Metcalfe is insightful about the world of contemporary influencers, voyeurism and the rise of narcissism, but it’s hard to warm to her aloof heroine.Elliot is the first narrator. “At the point that we meet Elliot, he is meeting her,” says Metcalfe. “So, as a reader, and for me as a writer, I got to look at her from the outside before I knew anything about her, as Elliot does.” It’s a really extraordinary, inscrutable book, I must have read it 15 times now…” says Anna Metcalfe of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, translated from Korean by Deborah Smith, which directly inspired her arresting and perfectly formed début novel Chrysalis. In Kang’s Man Booker International-winning novel, the central protagonist Yeong-hye undergoes a mysterious transformation which is relayed to the reader by three other characters— her husband, brother-in-law and sister—but not Yeong-hye herself. A man who sees the woman in the gym and get a front seat view into how she transforms her body. 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. The novel is inspired by Han Kang’s The Vegetarian, which is reflected in the structure of Chrysalis; the story of the protagonist is told through the perspective of three people as they witness her metamorphosis. Like Kang, Metcalfe succeeds in creating a tone that is both detached and all-consuming as she probes into the motives of the protagonist and explores the effects of her actions on those around her throughout her journey to achieve a self-sufficient lifestyle. Here, we have the overarching paradox that underpins the novel - the desire to live a life of solitude as an influencer, benefiting from a capitalist, consumptive society, while rejecting it under the pretence of self-care. Each of these three witnesses to the woman desires closeness. Each is left with only the husk of who she was before she became someone else: a woman on a singular and solitary path with the power to inspire and to influence her followers, for good and ill.