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Green Dot

A Novel

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"Madeleine Gray takes a scalpel to millennial malaise, office romance, and infidelity, and the result is a brainy, gutsy, nervy—and hilarious—wonder of a novel."
—Meg Howrey, author of They're Going to Love You
"Simon's sarcastic delivery captures the emotions of a heroine with the desire to be powerful in a world in which she is powerless. Simon's narration wavers between the overconfidence of youth and the insecurity of someone who knows she's in the wrong. This is a perfect audiobook for fans of the show Fleabag." —AudioFile on Green Dot
An irresistible and messy love story about the terrible allure of wanting something that promises nothing
At twenty-four, Hera is a clump of unmet potential. To her, the future is nothing but an exhausting thought exercise, one depressing hypothetical after another. She's sharp in more ways than one, adrift in her own smug malaise, until her new job moderating the comments section of an online news outlet—a role even more mind-numbing than it sounds—introduces her to Arthur, a middle-aged journalist. Though she's preferred women to men for years now, she soon finds herself falling into an all-consuming affair with him. She is coming apart with want and loving every second of it! Well, except for the tiny hiccup that Arthur has a wife—and that she has no idea Hera exists.
With its daringly specific and intimate voice, Green Dot is a darkly hilarious and deeply felt examination of the joys and indignities of coming into adulthood against the pitfalls of the twenty-first century and the winding, tortuous, and often very funny journey we take in deciding who we are and who we want to be.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 13, 2023
      Australian writer Gray debuts with the canny story of a 24-year-old woman struggling to be an adult. Throughout her life, Hera never believed in getting a job. In high school, she was a good student but not well liked, and since college she has been living with her father in Sydney, biding her time until she is forced to support herself. Eventually, she’s hired as a “community monitor” for a digital news outlet. During her first week, she’s ignored by the office’s journalists and counts down the hours as she moderates online comments. Hera’s dull routine brightens after an encounter with a manager named Arthur
      in the elevator, where she decides to “cannonball into conversation.” Hoping to make an impression, she asks him, “Who do you hate most in the office?” Arthur responds later via DM, their chatting leads to drinks, and they begin an affair. Hera falls for him and develops an obsession, which only grows stronger as Arthur refuses to leave his wife. Hera is vibrantly written, and Gray thankfully provides her narration with enough distance for self-clarity (“It is possible that my dedication to this relationship was in fact a dedication to my belief in myself”). Gray’s unflinching bildungsroman is great fun.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Sasha Simon gives voice to 20-something Hera as she figures out who she is in this new audiobook. After exhausting her options at art school, Hera enters the workforce as a content moderator for a news website. Every day she monitors the bad behavior of others, but when she finds herself in an affair with a married colleague, she has to justify her own bad behavior. Simon's sarcastic delivery captures the emotions of a heroine with the desire to be powerful in a world in which she is powerless. Simon's narration wavers between the overconfidence of youth and the insecurity of someone who knows she's in the wrong. This is a perfect audiobook for fans of the show "Fleabag." V.B. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
    • Books+Publishing

      August 15, 2023
      Madeline Gray’s debut novel, Green Dot, which has enjoyed a lot of pre-publication buzz, is a surprising read. With some superficial markers of the recently popular ‘sad girl’ novel—particularly in the first quarter, where the main character, 20-something Hera, is self-indulgent and unlikeable—I found that it was a bit flat to start. But not for long. When we meet Hera (ironically, the Greek name for the goddess of marriage and family), she is an overly qualified arts student, living with her father and looking for something—or someone—to attach to. Instead of being an active Instagram ‘green dot’ in her life, Hera is more like a thumb hovering over an aimless scrolling screen, and the reader wouldn’t be blamed for ‘shutting down’. However, Green Dot has heart, and gathers pace when Hera joins a media company as an online community moderator (her acerbic observations of office life and her colleagues are laugh-out-loud funny), and enters into a relationship with the married 40-something Arthur. The affair plot should be cliched and bland, but the biting honesty of Hera’s commentary and the surrounding dialogue make it relatable, grimly funny and engaging. It’s tempting to assume that this novel is just for the younger demographic of Sally Rooney and Dolly Alderton fans, but the unrelenting dissection of unrequited love and forensic insight into the world of affairs gives Green Dot a universal appeal to anyone curious about the human condition.

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  • English

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