I really liked this book but hated the ending. Welcome to the story of Cassie, a newbie in the Silicon Valley tech startup who is dealing with a mental breakdown. The author did such a good job of describing the absolute dread that comes with being stuck in this capitalist hellscape. This was for me. I’ll be thinking about it for a while.

How does a person live when their life has been shrunken down to almost nothing?

No, this is not another episode of Startup. This is a story about burn-out, soul-crushing job that doesn’t even cover the rent, the machinations in a toxic workplace and the disillusionment of the glittery promise of wealth in the tech world.

Though isolated, Cassie is never alone. From her earliest memory, a miniature black hole has been her constant companion. It feeds on her depression and anxiety, its size changing in relation to her distress. The black hole watches, but it also waits. Its relentless pull draws Cassie ever-closer as the world around her unravels.

When her CEO’s demands cross an illegal threshold and she ends up unexpectedly pregnant, Cassie must decide whether the tempting fruits of Silicon Valley are really worth it. Sharp but vulnerable, funny yet unsettling, Ripe portrays one millennial woman’s journey through a late-capitalist hellscape and offers an incisive look at the absurdities of modern life.

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I think what I liked most about this book was not the inner workings of the main heroine or her cocaine addiction (man, she was snorting lines like there was no tomorrow). I didn’t even bat an eye at the ever dark news headings talking about a virus spreading from Europe into the US and the rise of the pandemic.

What I liked was the depictions of the life filled with such extremes in San Francisco:

Here, I am surrounded by all of the signs of money crushing the life out of a place: the rich live inside tall town homes, the poor live in faded dirty tents if they are lucky, there are boarded-up businesses next to new juice bars, people either defecating in the streets or buying gourmet groceries, eating at overpriced restaurants or out of the dumpsters in the back alley. It’s a city of extremes.

The open office floor plan is a form of strangulation. White desks stand in perfect rows on blue-gray carpet. The lighting has been scientifically proven to increase our productivity by 14 percent. Giant concrete-colored couches dot the room, an invitation to sit and relax. But I have never seen anyone sit on the sofas. The subtext is clear: we must never relax.
The layout means everyone can see us as we walk, eat, think, breathe, work. Every move is on display. The office is two hands around my throat and an invisible eye, spying, monitoring, measuring our productivity.

As someone working in tech, I have felt this. I have hated open spaces, the lack of privacy, the ever present presence of the management tracking you and your productivity. I know this. And to see it written down like a hand strangling you, it feels like it nails it somehow.

I loved the binary text peppered through the book describing the core values of the corporation she was working in.

01000101 01111000 01100011 01100101 01101100 01101100 01100101 01101110 01100011 01100101 00101100 00100000 01110010 01100001 01110000 01101001 01100100 00101101 01100110 01101001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101111 01100100 01110101 01100011 01110100 01101001 01110110 01101001 01110100 01111001 00101100 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100010 01101111 01100100 01101001 01100101 01110011 00101100 00100000 01101111 01110000 01110100 01101001 01101101 01101001 01111010 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00101100 00100000 01101100 01101111 01100111 01101001 01100011 00101100 00100000 01110000 01100101 01100001 01101011 00100000 01110000 01100101 01110010 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 00101110 00100000

Excellence, rapid-fire productivity, lean bodies, optimization, logic, peak performance. Don’t stop. Never stop. Keep working. You are better than everyone else. You don’t need food. You don’t need sugar. Work harder. Work harder. Work harder. Grow beyond what you are. Transcend your fears. Leave your heart at home. All that matters is your output.

You’ll never truly be one of us. You’re only here for a brief moment before we discard you. Do your job and be quiet. We don’t owe you anything. You are lucky to be along for the ride. Don’t ask questions. Don’t speak. Perform. Produce. Do what we tell you to do. You are nothing but a computer with a pulse. We only want your motherboard. We are not your friends. We are not your family. We are a team until we have succeeded.

The second part the book focuses on is black holes. Or depression in this case. While the author spends some time to talk about black holes and the one following Cassie, it’s really about depression. The dark void that grows bigger when alone. The thoughts swirling, the loneliness. She thinks she was born with it and perhaps her mother had one too (black hole) but for her, it’s a visual manifestation (much like her mother’s words are)

“Whether you go or not, you need to get a fucking grip. And tougher skin.”
I imagined myself like that: a woman with tough skin, my body covered in leather, walking through the world impenetrable, untouched by sadness or sea.

Depression and lack of purpose dot her life in the big city – and that drive that she sees in the new hires is missing from her. Or maybe it was present at the start only to be stripped away by daily grinds. She lacks focus and a purpose.

Why would I stay here? Why do we do anything in our lives? Is it always driven by motivation or desire? What might begin with a passionate choice can turn into paralysis or lethargy once that decision has been realized and the newness wears off. A single choice made with the best intentions can become a terrible life. Imagine biting into a seemingly ripe fruit, only to have your mouth filled with rot.

You wake up one day and realize what you’ve become, what you allow, and you have to stare down into the pit at yourself, at your own choices, at the ways in which you have been cunning and stupid and false and wretched to keep up with the world around you.

Each chapter holds a word from the dictionary and then a definition of it and how it applies to her life. Some of the thoughts are quite deep and I had to really sit and think a little (I love books that make me do so). And what really drew my attention was the mention of the pomegranate – the fruit of adultery and sexy and fertility.

There are moments I am perfectly ripe, too, moments when I am the fruit bursting with the reddest of seeds.

The discount pomegranate sits on my counter. I pick it up. The fruit is deep red with hints of white and burgundy and yellow. It has a small crown at the top. I squeeze the pomegranate gently, unsure how to release the hundreds of seeds inside that glitter like bloody jewels.

The third theme in the novel (we had the depression, the job and the city) is motherhood. There’s a chapter about Cassie’s mother and her dysfunctional upbringing and there’s another one on a definition of a daughter. But what’s really upsetting her is that she’s pregnant with a situationship that has no future.

And I think this is what it all boils down to. Choices she made willingly or unwillingly through her life – brought her to this point where she feels she has no choice left and thus, no future paths she can go. Depression finally takes over and in an ending that I really hated, she takes a step forward. Forward where? into the black void? That will possibly tear her apart or take her to a wormhole to a new destination? Or off a ledge and into death?

PS: If you’re struggling with a black hole yourself, have a read at

• How to prevent depression
• Helping Yourself with Depression
• All About Clinical Depression
• Understanding Zoloft Depression Better
• Dealing With Sorrow – Depression Management
• Getting anxious over Anxiety Depression?

I was really interested in the subject years ago, and thankfully got it under grips. But it’s a life changer, and not only for the better.. it can be really dark sometimes, almost like a black hole.