Madeleine Gray‘s debut novel Green Dot is a millennial romp that astutely observes romance, work, and failure to live up to expectations. Anyone of a certain age has lived through countless recessions, wars, and turmoil. They know how exhausting life can be. Gray turns the minutia on its head to spark hilarious moment after moment as an affair unfolds and breaks the main character out of the exhaustive cycle she’s found herself in.
Can you briefly summarize the excerpt you’re sharing with readers today?
The excerpt I’ve chosen to share comes at an early point in the novel in which protagonist Hera is adjusting to her new corporate life. After three arts degrees, she’s finally ceded and gotten a soulless job as a comment moderator at a news website. Green Dot looks at how capitalism modulates our wants and desires, and in this scene we see the way in which Hera is being existentially flattened by performing daily labour that to her mind does not equate to societal value of any kind. However, it is in this scene that Hera shares her first moments of connection with her colleague and now comrade-in-arms, Mei Ling, who is also doing this terrible job. We see two young women attempting to find moments of absurd joy via mutually observing the bizarreness of their situation and the pointlessness of their work. It’s an homage to the “work wife.”
What was the goal when writing this part of the book? What was the hardest part to get right?
The first third of the book provides context for Hera as a character – her wants, her political views, her sense of humour. It is considerably lighter in tone than the rest of the novel, and this was a very conscious choice. I wanted to lull the reader into a false sense of security, I suppose – this section reads in many ways like a workplace comedy. But it also sets up Hera’s existential despair. As such, when she soon becomes embroiled in a workplace affair with a boring older man, we are better able to understand why she would make this problematic and boringly normative choice. We can see that for Hera, life is about commitment to the bit.
How does this excerpt speak to the rest of the novel?
I think tonally, this excerpt gets to the heart of Hera’s dry, observational prose, and it also speaks to the ideological concerns of the book: happiness within neoliberalism, the bonds of mutual care that can grow in hostile work environments, the generational divides that modulate many workplace dynamics. Most importantly, for me, it is both devastating and funny. These are always my two main affective charges.
An excerpt from Green Dot
The next day is a Tuesday; the day after that a Wednesday. I know this because I have to be aware of days now.
A routine has been established, in that I sit, Alison sits, Mei Ling sits; we all sit. We have our counterpart community moderators in the UK and in the US, and each morning before we get started on the day’s work we have a videoconference in which they communicate the night’s happenings so we’re all caught up on which particular opinion piece about Palestine has been blowing up in the comments. It is amazing how desensitised everyone is. A guy called Mark, skyping us from his cubicle in London, yawns visibly as he tells us about state-sanctioned genocide and how readers are “not being very chill” about it, and we yawn visibly back. Alison sits with her shoulders down, indicating that the weight of the world has never not been on her.
There are all kinds of acronyms to learn; so many different ways to categorise groups of people in internet slang. I’m not a total luddite, I do know some of the acronyms just from life (LOL, am I right, fellow kids). But on my third day I miss the meaning of a whole comment exchange on an article about working from home. One commenter is calling everyone who works from home a “Wuslim.” I’m aware from a previous Google search that Wuslim means “white Muslim,” but I really can’t understand what that has to do with people who work from home. I ask Alison if she can relieve me of my ignorance.
“Ah,” she says. “You don’t know Wuslim?”
“Yeah, no, I do, I think. I just don’t understand why calling someone a Caucasian Muslim would be a) an insult or b) contextually relevant.”
She looks at me like I have so much to learn (and I guess I do), then wordlessly turns back to her monitors.
Mei Ling studiously ignores this exchange. I’m starting to think Mei Ling might be a genius.
I get back to scrolling. I scroll, I scroll, I colour-code, I scroll. I contemplate Zelda. WWZD?
She would not be here is what.
I receive a notification on my browser—ping! Mei Ling has added me as a contact on the internal IM. I am buzzing. What does this mean?
The dot next to her name is green; I watch the ellipses dance: she is typing. I know I should do work and then just return to this window when I get a notification that she’s actually sent the message; this would be the logical thing to do. But there is something about the typing ellipses that pulls me to stare directly at the screen until the text comes through. They tell you not to look
directly at the sun, but you do it anyway, don’t you? Don’t you?
Ping!
Mei Ling Chen: You get used to her, I promise.
I look over at Mei Ling’s shoulders. She has not looked up, she has not changed her posture at all to intimate IM complicity. Her hair is not completely obscuring her profile at this moment, and I can see that she is not smirking, as I do whenever I receive an amusing text in silence. I am thoroughly impressed by her subterfuge.
I consider typing back: Like you can get used to the smell of shit if you sit in it long enough?? But no, I will bide my time. Mei Ling and I are not there yet. Slowly, slowly, Hera. I need to say something that invites further banter, but that could also be interpreted as earnest work chat if I misread the situation and Mei Ling is actually just being a supportive girl boss in a corporate environment.
Hera Stephen: How long will it take until that happens, do you think?
A pause.
Dots pop up, dots disappear.
Ping!
Mei Ling Chen: You just have to wait until you give up on all of your dreams, and then everything becomes a lot easier. The moment will come, have faith.
Oh my god.
Oh my god, Mei Ling is funny. Mei Ling is funny and depressed. My two favourite things in a potential friend. I am beaming. I am floating. Mei Ling, you saucy devil, you sly dog, you also hate this!
I stifle a guffaw. Mei Ling looks up. I catch her eye—I have to!
I have to catch it! She smiles knowingly at me, and I back at her.
I now have an ally on my side of the desk. This must be how Brutus felt when he first realised Cassius also had a boner for killing Caesar. Don’t google that, I don’t know if that’s how it
went. Let me have this.
The day becomes much more psychologically manageable now, as Mei Ling and I get into the rhythm of messaging each other screenshots of particularly chaotic comments from the articles we canvass for hatred and copyright noncompliance.
That thing I said before about cats and dogs? That was not just a hypothetical. That Wednesday afternoon I spend four hours of my life moderating a comments section on an opinion piece by a well-known Australian journalist who has had the temerity—nay, the fucking gall—to write that cats are better than dogs, and to put this in her article’s headline. It’s like she actively wants to incite another world war. Have we not suffered enough?
The comments start off reasonably amicable. @petmum agrees with the journalist’s position. @petmum also has a cat, and she loves her cat. She is pro cats.
Brilliant, so far so good.
Next up @dantesinferNO agrees that some cats can be nice, but he doesn’t like the attitude of most cats, who act all haughty. @dantesinferNO only thinks that cats are better than dogs if you are comparing a really good cat to a really bad dog.
Not quite the point, but fine, yes, whatever. Pass.
@drunkinlove now contributes the inevitable cat gif to the conversation. They choose the one where Salem the talking cat from Sabrina the Teenage Witch does some weird stilted puppet mwahaha laughter and you can almost see the hand inside the stuffed animal moving it around.
I am fine with this, I appreciate a well-timed gif. Do I wonder who @drunkinlove is, and what they are doing in their life that means they have the time and inclination to contribute a gif of a cat to an opinion piece about pets? Yes, I do wonder this. But again, this is all kosher, all above board. No need to get my digital highlighter out just yet.
Now @truthbot enters the conversation, and here’s where it begins to turn. My spidey senses are tingling; I feel chaos in the air.
@truthbot: dogs r obviously better than cats, author sounds like a pussy bitch.
@truthbot: hope she gets splayed & stops wining
I assume @truthbot means “whining,” but how are we ever to know? Some things on this earth will always remain mysteries, and I think that’s beautiful.
@petmum returns to the fray: Honestly, @truthbot, I think you’d do better not to spread such meanness around. The author likes her cat. Some people prefer cats.
Then the inevitable:
@gleesimp: you missed out on birds. Birds are the best pets. My mum died of cancer and my bird was the only thing that got me through.
@debby: What about goldfish? Did the author of this piece ever even consider that? Feels like she should have, if she was going to rank pets. This article is DRIPPING in privilege. Author doesn’t even consider that most people can’t afford dogs or cats, or even any pets at all?? Obvious to me that she’s from family money.
Imagine if this exchange had occurred this morning, when I didn’t have Mei Ling to send screenshots to.
Excerpt from the new book Green Dot by Madeleine Gray published by Henry Holt & Company ©2024.