Chrysalis

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She looked around, and when she couldn’t see what she was looking for she came to me. Her hips swayed as she walked. She moved slowly, holding my gaze.

Her resilience becomes performative as she posts videos and launches a career as a cult figure who embraces solitude AM: The more I wrote this book, the more it became about responsibility itself and how we take responsibility for one another, what kinds of responsibilities we have towards the other people in our lives, particularly when the relationships are less clear. For example, colleagues or strangers or people you meet in the gym. Because she so readily rejects all the responsibilities she used to have to other people in her life, it makes us think about the responsibilities we think we ought to have. It’s surprising to see somebody who doesn’t seem to feel any. 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.” Each of these witnesses is left with the memory of the person they once knew, as our unnamed character is on a solitary mission to inspire and influence her followers to take on the same metamorphosis of solitude and selfhood - for better but ultimately for worse. JA: I like that. It feels like capitalism asks us to tie our identity to work, and when a lot of these characters lose that or experience change, they have this moment of: Who am I? What makes me happy? Does anything make me happy? Is it consuming more that’s going to make me happy?I also thought a lot about the necessity of performing some sort of victimhood in the face of trauma in that it is almost required, I think, that someone might appear damaged or might perform their victimhood in a way that makes their trauma legible to others. Here, we have a protagonist who has experienced trauma, but is refusing to perform any kind of victimhood. She only really offers us tiny moments where she’s willing to exhibit vulnerability. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.

They all watch as she strengthens her body and mind and begins to post viral videos that advocate for her viewers to take drastic measures to acquire true self-sufficiency. I first met her at the gym. It was early in the afternoon and busier than I would have liked. People, on the whole, make me nervous, but not because I’m insecure. I’m self-employed and live alone. I prefer my own company and keep my own time. I’ve become very good at finding the quietest possible time to do anything, and I’ve been a regular at the gym for a while. Like any habitat, it has its own rhythm, a circadian flow. Once you know how it goes, it’s easy to make it work for you.

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Chrysalis is a thrilling look at how we spin silk around ourselves by watching the world on our screens.”— The New York Times Book Review 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. 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. In the end, it felt as though we missed out on the most interesting aspects of the character's transformation - becoming a supposed cult leader. The cult she builds is only ever vaguely alluded to, and it's unclear how this would have happened or if it actually happened at all. So much of the story existed in a seemingly liminal space, and it seems to be the authors' intent despite how much it left me wanting. 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.