Green Dot
by Madeleine Gray
2024
Green Dot is a literary novel about a young woman's affair with an older, married man. Hera, our narrator, tells us on the first page that every other story like this showed her what she should expect, told her how it would end, but she was certain that, for her, it would be different.
Hera's voice is really what makes this novel work. Madeleine Gray has created a narrator who's both witty and wry but also chatty, smart without being boring or distant. She's very quotable! I'm actually going to include some quotes in this review, which I don't usually, because so many jumped out at me that I went back and wrote them down. Most of Green Dot is told in the present tense, as though it's happening now, but from time to time, the slightly older Hera who's actually doing the telling will add some of the benefit of her perspective, often humorous.
I like that Hera is aware of her mistakes and willing to admit them, but also has had enough time to forgive herself for them. She doesn't pretend they didn't happen, doesn't make excuses, but also doesn't just excoriate her younger self either. I think something I appreciate in coming-of-age stories, something I maybe can't enjoy them without, is that double perspective, that recognition of where the younger version could've been better, where the older self has finally learned. Without that, I think you just get a celebration of irresponsibility, you get a refusal-of-age, a desire to stay young, learn nothing, make the same mistakes forever.
The first part of Green Dot is the funniest. When we first meet Hera, she's finished college and moved back in with her dad. She's Australian, and considers herself a lesbian. She has friends she's been close with since high school, and all of them have jobs, partners, all of them have started building adult lives. Hera doesn't have or particularly want a job, but she does want to be an adult, so she gets a job as a comment moderator for a newspaper's website. Her observations about office life are great, as when she first realizes that indeed, not only did she not want a job, she specifically doesn't want this job: "I smile the smile of someone who is satisfied because her predictions about everything being awful are correct. I smile the smile of a young woman who, at the behest of her partnered-up girlfriends, goes on a Tinder date with a guy who looks like a wanker in his profile, and on the date the first thing he talks about is his love for Elon Musk, and she just sits there, ecstatic, holding back a tear of self-congratulation, thinking, Yes, exactly. Exactly as I imagined." (33)
The whole time Hera's working at the newspaper, she's bored, unsatisfied, waiting for her life to start. She both wants to be included in the office social life, such as it is, and also finds it all unbearably cringey. "I want to die but, devastatingly, this does not occur. I am very much alive, and sitting on a rolling chair." (37)
Eventually she meets Arthur, a reporter who feels like the one person in the place who's on her same wavelength. Hera has one running IM chat going with one of the other moderators, and starts another with Arthur. He invites her out to drinks with the other journalists. The second time, they go out for a late dinner after the drinks. And then Hera brings him home, and they have sex.
And then, then, immediately afterward, she finds out he's married.
From here, the rest of the book repeats in cycles. Hera and Arthur are happy together. Hera learns something that makes her realize she ought to break up with Arthur, but decides she doesn't want to. She tries to live with it, but it makes her more and more unhappy. She finally talks to Arthur, who promises he'll tell his wife about the affair and leave her. But he doesn't. Hera gets sadder and sadder. She tries to make a break from Arthur, but he convinces her to take him back, and for awhile, they're happy again, until the next crisis, when the cycle starts again.
But it's not just a cycle; it's a downward spiral, and with each turn, it gets worse. Hera gets sadder and more stressed. Her life contracts as she spends less time with her friends, less time doing anything she enjoys, and more and more time waiting for Arthur. She wants to be available and ready, whenever he can find a few free hours to slip away from his wife. She wants to be on her phone, on Instagram, the app they use to communicate, in case he messages her, in case even just his green dot appears, indicating he's online, indicating he can see she's online too. To try to get away, Hera quits her job at the newspaper, she moves away. But she also keeps coming back.
The first turn of the screw is the happiest, maybe even moreso than when they're first tentatively dating, before the first time they have sex. Hera and Arthur sneak around Sydney, renting cheap hotel rooms, trysting in parks, avoiding parts of the city where anyone might know or recognize them. Hera's closest friends know about the relationship. They don't approve, but they try to support her. "You cannot tell your friends that their relationship is doomed because their partner is trash. You cannot even tell your friends that their partner, though they may not be trash, is nevertheless just not that good." (152)
But what Hera discovers is something I learned too, when I was trying to stay in the closet about being trans - when you're keeping something big enough and important enough secret, it's almost impossible to build friendships. People may like you, but they don't really know you, and you can't feel any mutual recognition or connection like that. "If you are trying to make a friend in a new city, you don't want the potential friend's first piece of knowledge about you to be that you are an unsuccessful homewrecker. A homewrecker is bad enough - but one who did all the bad things and still didn't get the guy? That's not only morally bankrupt, it's pathetic." (186)
Hera could 'come out,' could tell the truth about herself, but she doesn't. "They all think I'm single and so are constantly trying to set me up with their housemates, lauding Bill's pasta-making prowess or Tina's bouldering strength. Bisexuality is a curse in this way: you must fend off double the terrible set-ups." (236) She goes on some dates, with young men and women her own age. She even sleeps with them, but only ones she doesn't really like. She prevents herself from forming emotional attachments that might lead her away from Arthur.
Why does Hera do this to herself? It's because, from the very first time they fuck, she falls in love with Arthur. She wants a life with him, wants to marry him, live openly with him. "People write about desire all the time, and I read the poems, I see the films. I've had sex a fair bit, I'll not pretend I haven't. But nothing can prepare you for that moment during sex with that one person with whom it all makes sense, like, Oh. Oh, I see now. I understand." (128)
She spends the whole book languishing in a diminishing half-life because she's convinced it's only temporary. She's convinced that he'll divorce his wife, that he'll be with her, only with her. She's convinced that the happiness she feels while they're having sex will be how she feels all the time when they're really together, when they're together openly. "When Arthur is inside me and my eyes are on him and our bodies move in tandem; I remember that I was not always sad, and that one day I might not be again. Perhaps this seems to you like a low bar for love. But trust me, and if you know you know - it really, really isn't." (146)
While Gray writes Hera as flippant and sly most of the time, when she talks about her love for Arthur, she's utterly vulnerable and sincere.
If you've ever had a one-sided crush on someone, you know how hard it is to make yourself stop wanting them. How impossible it feels, especially at first. And at least, in that endeavor, you're aided by the knowledge that the other person doesn't want you back. Hera doesn't even have that. "The fog clears in my mind: no thoughts, just ecstatic pleasure. I understand why people start wars, I understand why people blow up their lives. If the choice is this or not this, I will destroy everything else every time." (228)
To all appearances, Arthur genuinely loves her too. He is pained (not as much as she is, but still) by the hurt he's causing Hera by not getting a divorce. He sincerely seems to not want to hurt her, but he is, he is, because he keeps making her the same promise, and keeps not fulfilling it.
I don't really need to tell you how Green Dot ends, do I? Hera told you, on page 1, what happens. She told you this story goes same the way these kinds of stories always go. What makes this book special is the excellent narrative voice, and the unflinching way Gray shows us the comprehensive destruction of Hera's entire life and sense of self in pursuit of a goal that isn't even hers to achieve, that can only be achieved for her, by a man who keeps telling her he will do something and then keeps not doing it.
Hera's voice is really what makes this novel work. Madeleine Gray has created a narrator who's both witty and wry but also chatty, smart without being boring or distant. She's very quotable! I'm actually going to include some quotes in this review, which I don't usually, because so many jumped out at me that I went back and wrote them down. Most of Green Dot is told in the present tense, as though it's happening now, but from time to time, the slightly older Hera who's actually doing the telling will add some of the benefit of her perspective, often humorous.
I like that Hera is aware of her mistakes and willing to admit them, but also has had enough time to forgive herself for them. She doesn't pretend they didn't happen, doesn't make excuses, but also doesn't just excoriate her younger self either. I think something I appreciate in coming-of-age stories, something I maybe can't enjoy them without, is that double perspective, that recognition of where the younger version could've been better, where the older self has finally learned. Without that, I think you just get a celebration of irresponsibility, you get a refusal-of-age, a desire to stay young, learn nothing, make the same mistakes forever.
The first part of Green Dot is the funniest. When we first meet Hera, she's finished college and moved back in with her dad. She's Australian, and considers herself a lesbian. She has friends she's been close with since high school, and all of them have jobs, partners, all of them have started building adult lives. Hera doesn't have or particularly want a job, but she does want to be an adult, so she gets a job as a comment moderator for a newspaper's website. Her observations about office life are great, as when she first realizes that indeed, not only did she not want a job, she specifically doesn't want this job: "I smile the smile of someone who is satisfied because her predictions about everything being awful are correct. I smile the smile of a young woman who, at the behest of her partnered-up girlfriends, goes on a Tinder date with a guy who looks like a wanker in his profile, and on the date the first thing he talks about is his love for Elon Musk, and she just sits there, ecstatic, holding back a tear of self-congratulation, thinking, Yes, exactly. Exactly as I imagined." (33)
The whole time Hera's working at the newspaper, she's bored, unsatisfied, waiting for her life to start. She both wants to be included in the office social life, such as it is, and also finds it all unbearably cringey. "I want to die but, devastatingly, this does not occur. I am very much alive, and sitting on a rolling chair." (37)
Eventually she meets Arthur, a reporter who feels like the one person in the place who's on her same wavelength. Hera has one running IM chat going with one of the other moderators, and starts another with Arthur. He invites her out to drinks with the other journalists. The second time, they go out for a late dinner after the drinks. And then Hera brings him home, and they have sex.
And then, then, immediately afterward, she finds out he's married.
From here, the rest of the book repeats in cycles. Hera and Arthur are happy together. Hera learns something that makes her realize she ought to break up with Arthur, but decides she doesn't want to. She tries to live with it, but it makes her more and more unhappy. She finally talks to Arthur, who promises he'll tell his wife about the affair and leave her. But he doesn't. Hera gets sadder and sadder. She tries to make a break from Arthur, but he convinces her to take him back, and for awhile, they're happy again, until the next crisis, when the cycle starts again.
But it's not just a cycle; it's a downward spiral, and with each turn, it gets worse. Hera gets sadder and more stressed. Her life contracts as she spends less time with her friends, less time doing anything she enjoys, and more and more time waiting for Arthur. She wants to be available and ready, whenever he can find a few free hours to slip away from his wife. She wants to be on her phone, on Instagram, the app they use to communicate, in case he messages her, in case even just his green dot appears, indicating he's online, indicating he can see she's online too. To try to get away, Hera quits her job at the newspaper, she moves away. But she also keeps coming back.
The first turn of the screw is the happiest, maybe even moreso than when they're first tentatively dating, before the first time they have sex. Hera and Arthur sneak around Sydney, renting cheap hotel rooms, trysting in parks, avoiding parts of the city where anyone might know or recognize them. Hera's closest friends know about the relationship. They don't approve, but they try to support her. "You cannot tell your friends that their relationship is doomed because their partner is trash. You cannot even tell your friends that their partner, though they may not be trash, is nevertheless just not that good." (152)
But what Hera discovers is something I learned too, when I was trying to stay in the closet about being trans - when you're keeping something big enough and important enough secret, it's almost impossible to build friendships. People may like you, but they don't really know you, and you can't feel any mutual recognition or connection like that. "If you are trying to make a friend in a new city, you don't want the potential friend's first piece of knowledge about you to be that you are an unsuccessful homewrecker. A homewrecker is bad enough - but one who did all the bad things and still didn't get the guy? That's not only morally bankrupt, it's pathetic." (186)
Hera could 'come out,' could tell the truth about herself, but she doesn't. "They all think I'm single and so are constantly trying to set me up with their housemates, lauding Bill's pasta-making prowess or Tina's bouldering strength. Bisexuality is a curse in this way: you must fend off double the terrible set-ups." (236) She goes on some dates, with young men and women her own age. She even sleeps with them, but only ones she doesn't really like. She prevents herself from forming emotional attachments that might lead her away from Arthur.
Why does Hera do this to herself? It's because, from the very first time they fuck, she falls in love with Arthur. She wants a life with him, wants to marry him, live openly with him. "People write about desire all the time, and I read the poems, I see the films. I've had sex a fair bit, I'll not pretend I haven't. But nothing can prepare you for that moment during sex with that one person with whom it all makes sense, like, Oh. Oh, I see now. I understand." (128)
She spends the whole book languishing in a diminishing half-life because she's convinced it's only temporary. She's convinced that he'll divorce his wife, that he'll be with her, only with her. She's convinced that the happiness she feels while they're having sex will be how she feels all the time when they're really together, when they're together openly. "When Arthur is inside me and my eyes are on him and our bodies move in tandem; I remember that I was not always sad, and that one day I might not be again. Perhaps this seems to you like a low bar for love. But trust me, and if you know you know - it really, really isn't." (146)
While Gray writes Hera as flippant and sly most of the time, when she talks about her love for Arthur, she's utterly vulnerable and sincere.
If you've ever had a one-sided crush on someone, you know how hard it is to make yourself stop wanting them. How impossible it feels, especially at first. And at least, in that endeavor, you're aided by the knowledge that the other person doesn't want you back. Hera doesn't even have that. "The fog clears in my mind: no thoughts, just ecstatic pleasure. I understand why people start wars, I understand why people blow up their lives. If the choice is this or not this, I will destroy everything else every time." (228)
To all appearances, Arthur genuinely loves her too. He is pained (not as much as she is, but still) by the hurt he's causing Hera by not getting a divorce. He sincerely seems to not want to hurt her, but he is, he is, because he keeps making her the same promise, and keeps not fulfilling it.
I don't really need to tell you how Green Dot ends, do I? Hera told you, on page 1, what happens. She told you this story goes same the way these kinds of stories always go. What makes this book special is the excellent narrative voice, and the unflinching way Gray shows us the comprehensive destruction of Hera's entire life and sense of self in pursuit of a goal that isn't even hers to achieve, that can only be achieved for her, by a man who keeps telling her he will do something and then keeps not doing it.
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