Review: Only Ever Yours

Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book at the suggestion of my friend Caroline, and with some hesitation because of its YA categorization. Young adult novels are not a disqualifier from my reading list, but I do tend to scrutinize them a little more prior to reading them. This was absolutely worth the risk. There are stretches where it's heavy on the YA feeling, but in the end it commits to the darkness within the story and the characters in a way that's more typical of classical dystopian literature than any YA novel I've read in the past 15 years.

A brief summary of the premise reads like a YA version of "The Handmaid's Tale" mixed with a morality tale about social media: In the future, some sort of ecological disaster has happened, the oceans have risen and separated the world into geographically and economically distinct 'zones', and female babies are no longer born naturally, but manufactured. They come off the production line with features like Perfect Green eyes, Ebony #2 hair, Flawless Pink skin on body template #607. The number of girls produced each year equals the number of men born that year in that zone, multiplied by three. This is because there are three roles a woman can fill: companion (the equivalent of wife), chastity (future teacher to young girls), and concubine (this one should be obvious). Until the age of 16, all girls are raised in a School where they learn all the things that women should learn to fill these roles, which, in this world, is mainly just how to be prettier, skinnier, and better than everyone else. They have no contact with the outside world (and, indeed, the novel never leaves the School, one of the many devices used to create a feeling of panic with no chance for escape), but are rated by the men of the zone based on weekly pictures, which determines their school rank and essentially their entire life.

I won't bother with a summary of the plot, because the standout of this novel is not plot but character. The main character, frieda (women's names and titles aren't capitalized here), has never been low in the ranks, but never been #1, either. That spot, from age 4 to 15, has gone to her best friend, isabel. But at the start of their final year, isabel suddenly withdraws from frieda and loses all interest in her ranking and physical appearance. frieda, unmoored from her emotional, psychological rock, slowly begins a slide into insanity. This is where the novel excels, wholeheartedly. frieda begins to crack under the constant pressure to be perfectly beautiful, her constant failure to do so, and the competing demands of what perfect entails (we're talking 'blonde or brunette?' here, not 'pretty or true to yourself'). It's a gut-wrenching, painful train wreck as we watch frieda try to navigate a social field she's never had to before, because she had one friend and that was enough. One of the understated messages of the book is the need for true human companionship; it's not just isabel's honesty or decentness or kindness that frieda desperately needs, but simply her presence, her interest in frieda. The presence of someone she can trust. When everyone treats you as an object, obstacle, or tool to leverage themselves, you have no context for 'self' beyond that, and frieda is not strong enough to create one from scratch. But their trust is broken, frieda can't bring herself to truly trust isabel again. There is a point where it seems like frieda might get the typical YA happy (or at least bittersweet) ending - she might land the hottest guy (who's nice, and into her as a person!) - but the novel grimly marches past that to the logical conclusion of frieda's personality and instability and what is allowed for her in this society. There are obvious comparisons to "The Handmaid's Tale" in terms of worldbuilding, but the most apt comparison for me in terms of how this novel felt was "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, or maybe "Woman at the Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy. Hell, throw in some "1984" for that ending. It's a tragedy in the classical sense, and an entertaining (if horrifying) spectacle to read.

There are some sizeable flaws in the story. Most notably, this world holds up to absolutely zero scrutiny. There are only 40 people born in a year in an entire Zone, and 30 of those are women with absolutely no skills, not even an idea of what 'math' is? And this place is somehow functional? No animals exist? It's not particularly solid storytelling in that respect.

The novel walks a fine line between 'satire or dystopia' and 'caricature,' and occasionally crosses that line. All of their high-tech sci-fi devices have names like ePad and MyFace - cutesy concatenations that seem like snide jokes, like what a middle-aged adult thinks things that teenagers like are called. Every Zone on the planet apparently functions in the same way and has the same culture (with strikingly Western values). Some of the world-building problems are a result of this effect, where something is so obviously exaggerated for effect that it couldn't possibly actually work. But this isn't always a problem. I don't think there's a single thing in this story that isn't just an exaggeration of what women experience in the real world on a regular basis. This world is clearly intended to be the real, gendered (Western) world with the contrast and saturation turned up to maximum.

I personally think there is a huge missed opportunity with this story in the relationship between frieda and isabel. The book is billed as a story of a deteriorating friendship between two girls; the title is "Only Ever Yours," referring to the girls' belonging to each other, not to these men. I was expecting something along the lines of Black Swan, maybe, but where the girls begin as true friends. But the novel begins at the end of their friendship, and while there are some moments of near-reconciliation, their relationship is not the story at all. A bigger focus on these two girls as friends, trying to be functional together but failing somehow, would've added a lot to the story (especially toward the middle, where it feels a bit repetitive).

Highly recommend this. I'm rating it 4 stars because of how powerfully the characters are written, but I suspect that after a few months I'll want to bump it down to 3 because it's not particularly complex or groundbreaking.

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