Is This OK?: One Woman's Search For Connection Online

Product Information

obsessed with this book!! it perfectly encapsulates what it's like to grow up online and be caught in the lifelong search for connection while capturing the changing culture and social media of the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Harriet Gibsone manages to write about all the embarrassing and cringeworthy stuff we do and think and the reasons behind them—the things we seldom admit to anyone else, the things that no teen coming-of-age comedy has ever explored with half as much cringe, humour, and honesty as Gibsone. there's something so special and specific about her writing, the way she blends humour and relatability, while displaying a generous amount of vulnerability, is a skill so impressive that it floored me. This is an unflinching look into one woman’s internet habits, and while I don’t think it will be for everyone, I personally found it to be an interesting read. Persistently funny, ill-advisedly honest and deadly accurate . . . My mind is blown -- Caitlin Moran, author of More Than a Woman The book feels split into two halves - one, Hattie’s youth and escapades in the music journalism game, and two, her more recent adult life, covering the pressures of work, becoming a parent, the early menopause and other difficulties Hattie writes about with honesty and transparency. I found myself both laughing out loud at times, and feeling sad at others. It’s raw and real and human. I was left seeking some kind of additional closure, but perhaps that’s for another book in the future. Social media is a hellscape: I mute or delete friends who have got pregnant by accident, or who post pictures of their weekend family utopias. I avoid seeing people who have children. My gorgeous niece and nephews’ birthday parties are painful; we can’t stay too long.

Gibsone, former deputy editor of the Guardian Guide, recounts her life as a young woman spending her time “feeding her neuroses and insecurities” with obsessive internet searching, including “compulsive” Googling of partners, their exes and becoming subsumed in “parasocial relationships”. However, her relationship with the internet changed once Gibsone was diagnosed with early onset menopause in her late twenties and when, later, she became pregnant after years of IVF, HRT and other “invasive” treatments.

Advance Praise

It’s not great news. I’ve got premature ovarian insufficiency and I’ve got less than 5% chance of getting pregnant on my own,” I shout while walking through the rush-hour crowds. As life has evolved, there has been a constant stream of objects of lust and intrigue.’ Photograph: Kate Peters/The Guardian. Makeup and hair: Dani Richardson using RMS Beauty and Kevin Murphy. Top: Pavement

Is This Okay' by Harriet Gibsone is like watching a demolition derby that’s starting to get out of hand; you go from mildly entertained to watching the flames rising and carnage turning bloody, and you find yourself starting to think “um, maybe someone should stop this.” Most of the rest of the book is Gibsone writing about her bland life with not much more about parasocial relationships. There are some parts about Myspace stalking and whatnot but nothing outside the ordinary for anyone that lived through that era. The book does go off the rails a bit with a deranged dirty disabled toilet fantasy about equally bland Chris Martin but it's not as amusing as the author probably thinks it is. obsessed with this book!! it perfectly encapsulates what it's like to grow up online and be caught in the lifelong search for connection while capturing the changing culture and social media of the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Harriet Gibsone manages to write about all the embarrassing and cringeworthy stuff we do and think and the reasons behind them—the things we seldom admit to anyone else, the things that no teen coming-of-age comedy has ever explored with half as much cringe, humour, and honesty as Gibsone. there's something so special and specific about her writing, the way she blends humour and relatability, while displaying a generous amount of vulnerable, is a skill so impressive that it floored me.

Summary

There is melancholy, too, in the gaps between how people feel and how they act. Seamus’s interior critiques of contemporary poetry are perceptive, but in seminars he is petulant. Fyodor, one of the non-students, has beautiful thoughts but doesn’t know how to express them and lapses into silence. Fatima has to work to support herself, which alienates her fellow dancers, more or less oblivious to their privilege, and she never really manages to make her friends understand. Despite the characters’ frequent self-absorption, the novel’s mood is one of tenderness and yearning.

I call my sister Libby. Seven years older than me, often in a car with her two boys, she’s the person I normally turn to when things get real. She’s driving and I’m on speakerphone.

Featured Reviews

Three eggs sounds OK, but every day the numbers will diminish; ideally we’d wait until day six, when we’ll have the strongest possible embryo to do the transfer. It’ll be remarkable if any stay alive that long. I keep the sober exchange a secret so as not to lower the mood over lunch. And so begins a dual journey: my quest to get pregnant, and my battle against the demon hormones’: Harriet Gibsone with her son. Photograph: Kate Peters/The Guardian Harriet spent much of her young life feeding neuroses and insecurities with obsessive internet searching (including compulsive googling of exes, prospective partners, and their exes), and indulging in whirlwind 'parasocial relationships' (translation: one-sided affairs with celebrities she has never met). In the weeks after the test, my husband can see I am struggling. He is, too. I can’t face putting Libby through it again; it’s a lot of time and physical and emotional labour. At this stage we are introduced to Dr Luca Sabatini by Debbie. A clean, strong, pragmatic Italian man, who is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist. My hero. Music journalist, self-professed creep and former winner of the coveted ‘Fittest Girl in Year 11’ award, Harriet Gibsone lives in fear of her internet searches being leaked. Until a diagnosis of early menopause in her late twenties, Harriet spent much of her young life feeding neuroses and insecurities with obsessive internet searching (including compulsive googling of exes, prospective partners, and their exes), and indulging in whirlwind ‘parasocial relationships’ (translation: one-sided affairs with celebrities she has never met).Suddenly staring down years of IVF, HRT and other invasive medical treatments, her relationship with the internet takes a darker turn, as her online addictions are thrown into sharp relief by the corporeal realities of illness and motherhood.An outrageously funny, raw and painfully honest account of trying to find connection in the age of the internet, Is This Ok? is the launch of an exciting new comic voice. Is This OK? One Woman’s Search for Connection Online by Harriet Gibsone – eBook Details