THE PLOT: ‘Chrysalis’ by Anna Metcalfe is a literary novel about three people’s perspective on one woman. Elliot notices her training at the gym as she transforms her body. Bella watches as she grows from a taciturn child to a distant young woman. Susie looks on as she reinvents herself, amassing a cult-like online following. All of them wonder if it’s possible to ever really know her.

SUMMARY: This is such a unique book. I almost don’t know how to summarise it. I guess it’s about community and individualism, how we connect online yet push people away. It’s about transforming yourself; both how other peoples’ actions can turn you into a shell of yourself, and how you can decide who you want to be. It’s about loneliness. How very isolated and alone each character is, and how they strive for connection via the main character because they admire her ability to be happily isolated. This is a subtle, unsettling novel that won’t be right for many people. But those who it affects will love it deeply.

GOOD BITS: I love this kind of writing. Simple, clean prose. No flowery sentences, no long passages of description, yet it still makes you stop and think. The author does a great job of conveying layered complex themes through simple language. What struck me the most is that every character in this novel is lonely. There’s something about this loneliness that I find deeply sad and disturbing, but I don’t know why. And it’s this emotional response which the book evokes that makes me really respect what the author has created.

NOT SO GOOD BITS: There’s nothing I’d change about this book. It feels intentional. It is what is needs to be.

OVERALL: I’d recommend this book to fans of ‘Convenience Store Woman’ by Sakaya Murata, ‘Grief Is the Thing with Feathers’ by Max Porter, and ‘Soldier, Sailor’ by Claire Kilroy.

You can purchase this book and support @aminasbookshelf on my bookshop.org page