Is This OK?

An extraordinarily honest, outrageously funny account of growing up as a millennial woman in the era of the early internet - from bad MSN boyfriends, to the tyranny of Instagram mumfluencers.

A music journalist, a self-professed ''creep'', and former winner of the coveted ''Fittest Girl in Year 11'' award, in Is This OK? Harriet Gibsone recounts her life as a young woman working in London; a life spent primarily feeding her neuroses and insecurities with obsessive internet searching (including compulsive googling of partners, their exes and respective entourages), and indulging in whirlwind ''parasocial relationships'' (translation: one-sided affairs with celebrities she has never met). However, when Harriet is diagnosed with early onset menopause in her late twenties and later becomes pregnant after several months and years of IVF, HRT and other invasive medical treatments, her relationship with the internet takes another turn, as her online addictions are thrown into sharp relief by the corporeal realities of illness and motherhood. Attempting to recover from a traumatic birth, Harriet is inexorably drawn into the world of Instagram mumfluencers and can''t help but compare their birth stories (peaceful, spiritual, life-affirming) with her own (gory, miserable, terrifying). As her life becomes ever more complicated, so do her online obsessions, and she increasingly finds herself asking the same question: is this OK? A raw and laugh-out-loud funny account of trying to find human connection in the age of the internet, Harriet is an incredibly exciting new comic voice.

Autorentext

Harriet Gibsone began her career as a runner for MTV, before becoming a music journalist in the 00s, writing for publications such as Q, NME, Time Out and Nylon. She spent eight years as a Guardian staff writer and editor and now has a column for its weekend magazine. Her memoir Is This OK? is published in 2023.