Is This OK?: One Woman's Search For Connection Online

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As I sit in the waiting room, the garish pinks and blues of Loose Women punching their way out of the tiny TV, I imagine how awful it would be if I was actually fine. All the moaning and sketchy behaviour for nothing. Or maybe it’s more serious than the menopause. Could there be something fatally wrong with me? A classy funeral, maybe in Edinburgh. Intimate, but a few famous faces come along to pay their respects. Will Mark ever find love again? A doctor calls my name. For the next few months, she is my secret guru. This steady, nurturing approach is essential for the baby’s growth, but it’s unfamiliar to me. After many years of using food as some form of punishment, restricting it, removing it from my body, and having little faith in my ability to look after myself, or that my body even works in the way it should, I am depending on Ella to teach us both how to survive.

While the overall theme of the book is internet culture, and the authors relationship to that, it also has a pretty interesting look into the indie music scene of 2007-2010, as she was working for a free music magazine during that time period. I've come to realize my relationship with the internet is an infidelity-a remorseless, ongoing affair with the fringes of humanity while I aμ in a stable relationship with all of my friends and relatives." She says that it is all right to sometimes feast on the contemporary wonders of global connectedness, as long as it is in small doses, and if I’ve slept for eight hours and have been outside for a walk. As life has evolved, there has been a constant stream of objects of lust and intrigue.’ Photograph: Kate Peters/The Guardian. Makeup and hair: Dani Richardson using RMS Beauty and Kevin Murphy. Top: PavementHonestly, I'm really struggling to work out whether I enjoyed this book or not. Is This Ok? is an autobiographical look at the life of Harriet Gisbone, a music journalist. The book follows her over a number of years and looks at how her use of the internet changes over time. She was in her early 30s when she experienced a host of alarming and mysterious symptoms: sweating, bloating, emotional instability and brain fog, leading to a diagnosis of premature ovarian insufficiency, one cause of early menopause. She struggles hard to get pregnant via a donor, and to give birth, and her account of both is quite stunning. The misogynistic resistance to women writing frankly about birth and motherhood means that such work is still too rare. The power and horror of bearing children have been covered with skill and clarity by writers such as Rachel Cusk in A Life’s Work and Anne Enright in Making Babies. Gibsone owns her place among them with a bloodied confidence after the fight it took to get there. Laugh-out-loud-on-the-train funny . . . swings between silliness and profundity . . . This is a book to hold on to and one to share, a warning and a map created by a watchful girl, telling others what may lie ahead” Maeve Higgins, Guardian She tells Anushka Asthana the powerful and occasionally hilarious story of her search for a diagnosis, the battle to control her raging hormones, and a newfound quest to have a baby. It’s not great news. I’ve got premature ovarian insufficiency and I’ve got less than 5% chance of getting pregnant on my own,” I shout while walking through the rush-hour crowds.

In the weeks after the test, my husband can see I am struggling. He is, too. I can’t face putting Libby through it again; it’s a lot of time and physical and emotional labour. At this stage we are introduced to Dr Luca Sabatini by Debbie. A clean, strong, pragmatic Italian man, who is a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist. My hero. Is This OK? swings between silliness and profundity; Gibsone is a writer taking herself seriously but having fun while doing it. This is a book to hold on to and one to share, a warning and a map created by a watchful girl, telling others what may lie ahead. I was 19 and in the market for a new idol when I first saw her bounce on screen with Popworld co-star Alex Zane in the mid-00s. Within months her reign as one of the last true “It” girls had begun – a force of style and personality that would later catapult her to America, launch her clothing brand and create the type of hype and mystique normally preserved by pop stars, or a natural deodorant that actually works. All her relationships, both online and IRL, are subjected to exhaustive analysis, comparison and self-conscious adjustments in her search for some imagined perfect state of being, in herself and in relation to others. It is a connection to a very adult world, an exercise in anthropology. To follow the couple’s every move, even though they aren’t the demographic we are typically interested in, is mesmerising. It is an ambient, almost meditative experience that creates a silent sense of camaraderie between us.Gloriously unfiltered, hilariously unhinged and utterly unlike anything else you'll read this year. Harriet's incredibly moving memoir made me laugh out loud, cringe, reminiscence and think deeply. What a wonderful introduction to a truly singular comedic voice; I remain in awe! -- Yomi Adegoke

We got three eggs,” she says with a conciliatory smile, and a defeated nod. “We’ll give you a call tomorrow to let you know how the fertilisation goes, and then we should be able to do the transfer.” Ella speaks a lot on social media and on her podcasts about the benefits of hypnobirthing: a method of pain management that involves mindful breathing and visualisations, and a woman I work with claims her baby slipped out like a bar of soap thanks to breathwork alone. I Google local classes and sign up for the nearest session. It’s not her fault that this is her life. She is just trying to promote positive birth stories so others aren’t afraid. But maybe they should be frightened? Women and babies still die in birth, and it’s not because they’ve not meditated hard enough; it’s because it’s seismic and unpredictable. And once the pain and blood of birth have finished, you are filled with psychological savagery on the other side. The first few days of motherhood are brutal. The level of high-functioning performance required is unparalleled. It’s like stumbling on stage at the start of the Oscars, your body bloodied and broken from a plane crash, and you’re handed a mic and told you’re hosting the whole gig, but if the jokes aren’t good enough, the audience dies. This liberation from my online fixation would be emancipating were it not for the algorithms offering me a string of other Parisian-themed babes to dodge during my mid-morning social media slump. The other issue is that I transferred all my obsession for her on to her ex, Alex Turner, and his new partners. obsessed with this book!! it perfectly encapsulates what it's like to grow up online and be caught in the lifelong search for connection while capturing the changing culture and social media of the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Harriet Gibsone manages to write about all the embarrassing and cringeworthy stuff we do and think and the reasons behind them—the things we seldom admit to anyone else, the things that no teen coming-of-age comedy has ever explored with half as much cringe, humour, and honesty as Gibsone. there's something so special and specific about her writing, the way she blends humour and relatability, while displaying a generous amount of vulnerability, is a skill so impressive that it floored me.

In 1972, the Apollo 17 mission took a photograph from space that changed the perception of how people saw the Earth. The picture became known as “The Blue Marble” because it showed not a green planet but a blue one. Every land mass is surrounded by a single interconnected ocean that acts, says the physicist Helen Czerski, as “a gigantic engine, a dynamic liquid powerhouse” that “takes sunlight and converts it into giant underwater currents and waterfalls, hauling around the ingredients for life”. I’ve come to realise my relationship with the internet is an infidelity: a remorseless, ongoing affair with the fringes of humanity, while I am in a stable relationship with all of my friends and relatives. I find it impossible to believe that I will have the strength to give up this habit for ever. But at least now there is a growing awareness of my fortune, and of the dangers of wasted time. My baby,” I cry, as he is raised from between my legs and immediately moved on to a table. The doctors huddle around his body. Mark is devastated. The baby is unresponsive, blue and limp. “It’s OK, it’s OK,” I tell Mark. I am as high as a kite from the epidural, but I am certain, from the depths of my soul, that he will survive. Mark puts his hand on my shoulder. “It’s OK,” I smile.

We rush into the hospital so they can implant it into my womb immediately. Two weeks pass. On the 14th day we do a pregnancy test. I’m not pregnant. I call my sister to tell her the bad news.The word “threat” is well chosen. Gibsone’s early romantic and sexual relationships are troubled. Some verge on abusive, and she turns the pain they inflict inwards. She torments herself with hunger, alcohol, and generally abnegates herself to meet others’ needs. Though drawn to music and art, she is not yet able to claim the power to create for herself. It’s comforting to know that this book is proof of her ultimate success in that respect. But it comes slowly. At first, instead of nurturing her own creativity, she makes a career out of tending to that flame in others. She becomes a music and culture editor at the Guardian, where she remains a contributor. I visit the doctor and tell him about the sudden short-lived sadness now seeping into hours and days, as if someone has murdered my soul, or something to that effect. “Would you consider antidepressants?” he asks.