Chrysalis

She is noticed by Elliot as he trains in in the gym. He sees her dedication to building her body and taking up space, and he is drawn to her strength. She is observed by her mother, as she grows from a taciturn, tremulous child into a determined and distant woman, who severs all familial ties. She is watched by her former colleague Susie, who offers her sanctuary and support as she leaves her partner and rebuilds her life, transforming her body and reinventing herself online. Each of these three witnesses desires closeness. Each is left with only the husk of the person they thought they knew, before she became someone else: a woman on a singular and solitary path with the power to inspire and to influence her followers, for good and ill.

Chrysalis is a story about solitude and selfhood, and about the blurred line between self-care and narcissism. It is about controlling the body and the mind, about the place of the individual within society and what it means when someone chooses to leave society behind. It is a strikingly contemporary story about the search for answers and those we trust to give them to us.

This is a very well-written novel that is shrewdly revealing about the alluring and insidious nature of contemporary consumer culture. It fully justifies Anna Metcalfe's inclusion on Granta's recent Best of Young British Novelists list TLS
Chrysalis is a savvy exploration of one woman's desire to inspire others, and how self-presentation can tip into obsession... Observer
Strikingly original... explores the dark side of influencer culture and probes questions of solitude, perception and self-invention... a triumph of observation and control -- Editor's Choice Bookseller
[An] eerily cool debut... in its acute examination of voyeurism, image and the deceptive nature of connection, [it] feels tailor-made for the age of the internet Daily Mail
Deliciously timely.... Metcalfe is a properly clever writer - she moves deftly between the voices of her narrators with ease, while her prose is assured, unforced, and almost graceful AnOther Magazine
Chrysalis examines the illusions built into our search for online connection and our idolisation of strangers simply because we feel intimate with them... The resulting tone is one of isolation and introspection, as though humanity were being viewed from afar - evocative of the psychological loneliness that is the extreme end of self-care Literary Review
Taking on questions of femininity and expectation, as well as social media and its ability to make a cult leader of anyone, Chrysalis raises as many questions as it answers about our society and our place within it -- "Most Anticipated Books of 2023" Lit Hub
It's all in the telling, which is gripping and subtle. Small pieces of information are drip fed to the reader, each moment viewed and reviewed across the different narratives. [Chrysalis] feels fizzy, with all these pops of observation on the move... Guardian
The effect of the novel's triptych form feels like looking at the protagonist through the lens of a kaleidoscope, each segment dazzling, but ultimately fractured, leaving compelling gaps in our perception of who she is Electric Lit
A powerful, eerie debut novel that investigates stillness and selfishness Kirkus Reviews
Perceptive.... [An] intriguing exercise in narrative.... Metcalfe clearly has her finger on the pulse of internet culture and its habitués Publishers Weekly
I really, really did love [it]... I think it's a really interesting discussion and reflection on a topic that is very prevalent in the world -- Jen Campbell
A subtle, perceptive and highly enjoyable novel which illuminates many of the challenges and absurdities of life as we live it now -- Cathy Rentzenbrink
Unputdownable, ice-cool and wittily contemporary, Chrysalis announces Anna Metcalfe as a distinctive and daring fresh literary voice. Utterly original and with shades of Ottessa Moshfegh, Patricia Lockwood, Yoko Ogawa and Alexandra Kleeman, this brilliant portrayal of desire and transcendence had me totally entranced -- Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti
WOW. I just devoured this. What a wonderful, painful, funny novel... It's so beautiful and cruel, and summed up just perfectly by the ending - a flawless final sentence, one of the best I've ever read, it absolutely gave me chills -- Avni Doshi
Chrysalis is a thrilling look at how we spin silk around ourselves by watching the world on our screens. We are the gaping entomologist; we are the pupa, always a little stuck -- Claire Luchette New York Times
Incredibly smart and totally unique... Ranging from online obsession, to mothers and daughters, to the very nature of selfhood, the whole thing is strange and warm and, crucially, very funny... I savoured every last brilliant sentence -- Ruth Gilligan, author of The Butchers, winner of the 2021 RSL Ondaatje Prize
A beautifully conceived triptych, shining and modern -- Lillian Fishman, author of Acts of Service
A masterclass in character, Chrysalis is an unsettling and brilliant portrait - not just of a woman in transformation or of those who fall into her orbit, but also of a world defined simultaneously by our isolation and by our longing to connect. This is a sharply-wrought, surprisingly tender book about how our internal changes create external change... often in ways we didn't intend -- Jen Silverman, author of We Play Ourselves
Managing the intimacy of the mother-daughter relationship and coming to terms with how it went wrong makes for compelling material The Times
The characters are always intriguing New Statesman

Anna Metcalfe's fiction has been published in The Best of British Short Stories, The Dublin Review and Lighthouse Journal, among other places. She has an MA and PhD in Creative Writing from UEA and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. In 2014 she was the youngest writer ever to be shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award for her story 'Number Three' and in 2016 her debut collection of short stories Blind Water Pass was published by John Murray.

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