To begin, the reader is dropped into a gym in a British town, where a man named Elliot stares at a woman working out, our protagonist, who is never named. He meticulously surveys her body, leaving the reader at first unnerved and then shocked when the two eventually start a relationship. She’s seemingly invincible until she injures herself in the gym and later breaks down in front of Elliot. Both events throw him and, although he still wants to be with her, his perception changes. She eventually stops seeing him without explanation, and he returns to his life of stressful administrative work and muscle building.
In part two, we are taken back to the protagonist’s childhood. It seems lonely, just her and her mother, Bella, in an old stone cottage. What appears as typical sass from a daughter to her mother becomes borderline resentment. The protagonist has a condition that makes her shake uncontrollably. It goes undiagnosed throughout, despite her mother’s attempts to find a solution. This adds tension to their relationship, but as she grows older, she steadies her shakes and heads to university, eventually getting a job as a lawyer. Her erratic behaviour from childhood is replaced by what looks like adult normalcy. Her mother, however, struggles to find her feet in life without her daughter.
We then take the view of the protagonist’s coworker, Susie. She’s the most distant of all but most captivated by the enigma that is the protagonist. Susie, with her newly bought home, is a place of refuge for the protagonist after an abusive relationship, and this gives Susie the sense of purpose she was lacking. It’s in this space that the protagonist works on her fitness, meditates and practises wellness. But she abandons Susie’s home when she gets the idea of returning to her childhood cottage, without her mother. She starts posting to a growing fanbase on social media about her new, reclusive lifestyle.
Chrysalis suggests the line between narcissism and self-care is a thin thread. It asks how much someone owes another in their life, how responsible they are for the havoc and heartbreak they cause and whether it’s morally reasonable to cut people out to “better yourself”.
Metcalfe writes in such a frank, matter-of-fact way that it’s a relief compared with narratives sometimes so dressed up that they lose their way. She delivers a finely detailed story that considers most of a woman’s life, and in an appealing style that taps into the thriller genre.
The lack of a classic climax, however, means the story doesn’t feed into what you expect, which is a surprise in itself. Because we are led through key periods in this young woman’s life solely via other people’s perspectives – a technique that can, for example, invite us to project upon their blank canvas or indicate a lack of agency – we wind up knowing everything that has happened in the protagonist’s life yet nothing at all about how she truly feels. This lack of identification reinforces the reader’s lack of connection, and although it is disconcerting to begin with, it becomes a stimulating point of difference.
The way people obsess over our protagonist might appear to reduce her to a caricature. But when we inspect the real-life phenomena of internet micro-influencers and celebrities that Metcalfe is critiquing, her life doesn’t seem so far-fetched at all. Truth really can be stranger than fiction.
Chrysalis, by Anna Metcalfe (Granta, $36.99)
