"Centred around an enigmatic young woman, three remarkable, interlinked tales form an un-put-down-able novel about selfhood, solitude, identity and the act of transformation."
Told in three parts, Anna Metcalfe’s Chrysalis is hands-down exceptional. Shot-through with unnerving elements of mystery, this masterwork of incisive, psychologically profound storytelling unveils a young woman’s transformation from the perspectives of three people who long to be close to her. Three people whose lives and outlooks are changed irrevocably by her, leaving them feeling husk-like and overawed in her wake. In the words of her mother: “She has a power over the people who find her; once you’ve known her, it’s hard to go back to a time before”.
Chrysalis is also a story about agency, taking control of body and mind, and the fine lines between fortitude, self-preservation, solitude and isolation. And all this is achieved through a true page-turner that demands to be read in one intense, enriching session.
In Part One we see through Elliot’s eyes as he’s drawn to a newcomer to his gym. A woman who’s strong, direct, utterly unselfconscious, and not afraid to take up space with her body. He’s immediately in her thrall: “I got the impression that she didn’t care what we thought. She wasn’t here to play a part in someone else’s spectacle because she had her own goals in mind”.
Next we meet her mother, and discover the woman’s tumultuous childhood and multiple transformations that were “swift and disarming”. But still, when her daughter severs family connections, her mother remarks, “I never wanted her to leave. I wanted to come home to her for always”.
Finally, we see her through the eyes of a colleague and friend who helps her heal in the wake of an abusive relationship and witnesses her transformation into the woman Elliot is enthralled by at the gym. A woman whose strength and online persona has garnered a cultish following of people who “don’t want change or process, they want something permanent they can trust”.
These days, her mother remarks, “some parts of her life are lived entirely in public; the rest she keeps to herself”. Her mother also regards her daughter’s reinvention online as manifesting her desire to avoid “having to confront the complexity of another human being”.
Exploring how women’s agency and control can result in retreating from the world, this remarkable novel reveals fundamental dissonances between selfhood and society with fresh, thought-provoking finesse.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
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