Are you a feminist?
Do you enjoy getting angry at very sexist things?
Then this book is for you!
Strangely, this is one of the most feminist books I’ve read, even though the content is exactly the opposite of feminism (if that makes any sense at all...)
Fast forward many years into the future, where all women were killed off for being the weaker race. Instead of natural women being born, they are made to be perfect, and called the eves. They are raised in the School, where they are taught to be beautiful, good and perfect wives. Ranked from one to thirty every Monday in terms of their beauty, the eves live in a world of pills, mirrors and the desire to be ranked number one. As the eves turn sixteen, they approach the Ceremony, the one thing they’ve been preparing for all their lives. It will determine what they will become: a companion, a concubine or a chastity.
This was a pretty easy read, very fast, mainly because you become sucked deep into the world of the eves, and you’re desperate to find out more. It’s very carefully constructed and a genuinely fascinating world, and also quite a sickening one in many ways.
The story follows frieda, a fairly popular girl who struggles to watch her former best friend and girl number one slip further and further down the rankings. Isobel is beautiful, until she decides she’s had enough and becomes ‘obese.’ Now here’s what interested me: how fat was isobel really? Was she genuinely obese? Or was she actually up to normal weight, that we would consider perfectly acceptable now but is so unheard of to the eves that it’s considered so awful? And here we have the first elements of an unreliable narrator. While frieda isn’t quite as awful as some of her peers, she’s still pretty bad. Who can blame her? The School is a viciously judgemental place.
Another thing that I thought was very clever; the fact that eves, or the eves’ names, are never capitalised. However, everything to do with males is. For example, some of frieda’s friends watch a programme called What kate Did Next, in which Charles hit carrie. In the book, as the eves begin to interact with their possible future husbands, each name is capitalised, as well as the jobs they do.
The book also illustrates how awful girls can be to one another; everything is based on what ranking you are, who you interact with, etc. It really shows how honestly cruel we can be in the fight to the top.
So, to summarise, Only Ever Yours is the perfect book to read if you need something quick and light but really engrossing and interesting at the same time.
4/5 stars.
-
Buy this book at the Guardian Bookshop
Want to tell the world about a book you’ve read? Join the site and send us your review!
