Yahoo News Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth review – trenchant satire of screen addiction
Emma Jane Unsworth’s virtuoso new novel is far too canny to convey anything so gauche as a “message”, but if it did, it would be this: step away from your screen.
Adults is a tale rich in keenly observed relationships – between mothers and daughters, best friends and boyfriends, idols and rivals – yet its central, inseparable pairing is that of thirtysomething heroine Jenny and her phone. Theirs is a supremely dysfunctional affair. At one point, it even gives her a black eye when she falls asleep while gazing up at it, though its sabotaging influence on her life is generally both more insidious and more damaging.
Jenny herself is zingy company, even at her worst, and it’s at her absolute worst that we meet her. A columnist for a feminist (or maybe femin-ish) website, she was once confident and poised. Then came a miscarriage and a breakup, and now – aided and abetted by her social media habit – she’s a “fragile maniac” who can’t post a picture of a croissant without subjecting its caption to multiple edits, each more anguished than the next.
While Jenny’s apps depict her living her best life, her world – her very self – is crumbling around her
This does not make for the most engaging of beginnings but by the second chapter Unsworth has hit her stride. Daffy one-liners, trenchant satire, misadventure of the laugh/cry variety – the narrative pops with all of the above as it parses everything from selfhood to attraction. “I liked the way his arms looked in his short-sleeved shirt. I was at an age when I still trusted muscles,” reflects Jenny on first meeting her photographer ex.
Its core topic, though, is digital addiction. Jenny lives in order to post, “grammability” being the goal. “If you put something on social media and no one likes it, do you even exist?” she asks. Later on, as its spell begins to lift, she wearily realises, “I have been connecting, and connecting, and connecting. I’m like an algorithm with feelings.” She’s not alone; on a bus, she even spots a toddler trying to use the window as a screen, pressing and swiping across the misted-up glass.
The fakery of online life, its codes, its rules, its soul-destroying self-promotion have been plenty anatomised but, as Unsworth shows, online anxiety also takes a very physical toll, too. Sure enough, while Jenny’s apps depict her living her best life, her world – her very self – is crumbling around her.
Unsworth’s first two novels, including Animals, a scabrous, tender tale of messy female friendship that became a film starring Holliday Grainger, were set in the north. Though this latest is as London as London can be, Jenny’s roots are northern, and the standout supporting characters in Adults both share her vowels. They are her no-nonsense best friend, single mum Kelly, and Carmen, her actress-turned-medium mother, who always has a pack of tarot cards handy and pours her gin in “all-inclusive-package-holiday measures”. When an intervention finally comes, these two women prove crucial, and from the chaos there emerges an offbeat, unexpected love story.
Though she’s a dauntingly able all-rounder (she can even pull off poetic: “I missed the north: its winds and mosses; its cool, thirsty cities”), it’s as a comedic writer that Unsworth sparkles, and her quickfire wit synthesises perfectly with her theme in Adults, mimicking the relentless pace of the internet. Yet like the very best of her kind, she creates a world complex enough that in the echoes of our laughter are also relatability, wistfulness, even hope. All are present in this novel’s satisfying close.
• Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth is published by Borough Press (£12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15.
