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

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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. We rush into the hospital so they can implant it into my womb immediately. Two weeks pass. On the 14th day we do a pregnancy test. I’m not pregnant. I call my sister to tell her the bad news.

I am touched by her speedy, warm and honest response but a bit perturbed as to why I sent the message in the first place. Days before, I’d listened to an episode of her podcast in which she reassured listeners that it’s fine to feed your body whatever it asks for in the first trimester, and that she just ate potatoes. So why did I send it? I then vow to keep her at arm’s length, painfully aware that I’m never more than one G&T-in-a-can away from becoming the type of person who writes “Well done hun, you’re stronger than you’ll ever know” underneath a post from a former Towie cast member whose miniature schnauzer has just been diagnosed with diabetes. through a series of hilarious, wry and impressively inquisitive anecdotes, this unflinchingly honest memoir tells the story of two crucial eras in harriet's life so far, both of which are engulfed by social media and the intense parasocial relationships it incites. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshopsCheeks pink with a post-orgasmic flush, her hair damp and tangled, the woman in the small square photograph is surrendering to an expression of total euphoria. In her arms is a tiny creature, so new and unformed it is still practically an internal organ turned external. It’s a special baby. A healthy, happy baby. It’s Deliciously Ella’s baby. 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. For the next few months, she is my secret guru. This steady, nurturing approach is essential for the baby’s growth, but it’s unfamiliar to me. After many years of using food as some form of punishment, restricting it, removing it from my body, and having little faith in my ability to look after myself, or that my body even works in the way it should, I am depending on Ella to teach us both how to survive. Then, at 31, she started to experience symptoms she couldn’t make sense of: forgetfulness, mysterious mood swings and bouts of weeping, and being woken in the night by sudden hot flushes. The sudden bursts of aggression made her feel like Piers Morgan. Her world was crumbling – but nobody could tell her exactly what was wrong. 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.

Laugh-out-loud-on-the-train funny . . . swings between silliness and profundity . . . This is a book to hold on to and one to share, a warning and a map created by a watchful girl, telling others what may lie ahead” Maeve Higgins, Guardian I'm glad I don't know her - or perhaps I'm more glad I was never the ex-girlfriend of somebody she was obsessed with - but I found the book to be oddly endearing, the deeper I got into it. My baby,” I cry, as he is raised from between my legs and immediately moved on to a table. The doctors huddle around his body. Mark is devastated. The baby is unresponsive, blue and limp. “It’s OK, it’s OK,” I tell Mark. I am as high as a kite from the epidural, but I am certain, from the depths of my soul, that he will survive. Mark puts his hand on my shoulder. “It’s OK,” I smile.

Suddenly, with a diagnosis of early menopause in her late twenties, 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. When I started reading 'Is this OK?' I wasn't at all sure I'd make it to the end. I found the style rather irritating and I wasn't even sure at first if it was fiction or autobiography. Once I'd settled in, and as Harriet got older, I became a lot more interested in her life. Ella speaks a lot on social media and on her podcasts about the benefits of hypnobirthing: a method of pain management that involves mindful breathing and visualisations, and a woman I work with claims her baby slipped out like a bar of soap thanks to breathwork alone. I Google local classes and sign up for the nearest session. Honestly, I nearly gave up at the beginning as, whilst the writing was good, the 'story' was pretty non-existent and I found myself wondering why on earth I was reading about someone's fairly uneventful life. I did enjoy it more towards the end and found myself really empathising with Harriet as she grew her family.

Terribly,” I reply. I refuse the drugs, leave the appointment promising to meditate and exercise, and decide to take matters into my own hands. given that morally ambiguous weird girl behaviour, '00s social media, online micro-communities and the blurred lines between url and irl are literally my favourite things to read about, i'm probably part of the exact audience gibsone set out to target with this book. i found her writing style funny and endearing, so didn't mind the few tangents that did little for plot progression. her deep dive into deliciously ella's pregnancy/birth/mum journey compared to hers is my fave part of the book. highly recommend! Is This OK? is a memoir, full of finely told stories that were once secrets existing only in the writer’s mind; addictions, obsessions, weirdnesses. Gibsone came of age at the same time as the internet, her own development shaped by its strange currents. She chooses episodes from her life and makes some of them funny – laugh-out-loud-on-the-train funny; some of them are frightening and sad. Many illuminate a bigger truth about living at this peculiar time and in the grey area between the online and offline worlds. That is, of course, where many of us spend hours each day, without fully realising it, even as researchers warn us of the negative impact on self-esteem and mental health. Brain fog leaves me exhausted and unable to form a coherent thought, let alone a sentence. I haven’t had a period for a yearHonestly, I feel like the author's real problem is that she spends so much time reading about the seemingly amazing lives of others and taking it as gospel that she forgot to live much outside of the typical awkward experiences that everyone goes through, thus making everyone else seem even more interesting, leading to more stalking. Does she really believe Deliciously Ella's overly perfect birth story? Harriet the Spy is a 1964 childrens’ book about a little girl who snoops relentlessly on her neighbours. Harriet Gibsone did the same thing when she was young. Now in her late 30s, she still shares with the fictional Harriet a powerful imagination and endless fascination with others. Harriet the Spy was banned in a number of American schools; apparently morally upright people didn’t approve of watchful girls trying to figure out the world on their own terms. I love these characters, nurturing as they do some feeling of control in a world where they do not have any. I’m a bit unsure on my thoughts for this one. I did enjoy reading it, and despite being that bit younger, I found it quite relatable in a way that I think most people, in their thirties and under, will - we’re so very easily drawn in to our phones, and we so easily make assumptions on other people based on what they have posted online. However the author tends to take that to the extreme, feverishly looking over partners ex-girlfriends digital footprints, hyperfixating on a fellow commuter (while struggling with personal issues), developing para-social relationships with influencers, and hearing Alexa Chung as the disparaging voice in her head. 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. It’s not her fault that this is her life. She is just trying to promote positive birth stories so others aren’t afraid. But maybe they should be frightened? Women and babies still die in birth, and it’s not because they’ve not meditated hard enough; it’s because it’s seismic and unpredictable. And once the pain and blood of birth have finished, you are filled with psychological savagery on the other side. The first few days of motherhood are brutal. The level of high-functioning performance required is unparalleled. It’s like stumbling on stage at the start of the Oscars, your body bloodied and broken from a plane crash, and you’re handed a mic and told you’re hosting the whole gig, but if the jokes aren’t good enough, the audience dies.