Detailing un-punctuated sentences mirroring a petty high school type drama of a rocky friendship, tremored by BOYS, between two teenage girls, the blurb of Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill surely disappoints. It fails to do the full plot of the novel any justice, which I believe is what initiated a biased mindset when turning to the first page.
The novel itself is based around a misogynistic society bred after the remnants of the old world, ours today, were lost causing new orders to be set. These orders were set as the world population began to decrease due to drastic sea level rise, caused by the inhabitants of the old world, wiping out nations and many many people. But as they were put in place, female rights had to go and the new configuration of the classic female roles all women had to pursue from birth or 'design date' was in. O'Neill presents to us a girl called Freida who is currently undergoing her sixteenth and final year of school (year 11) of which it is the crucial year and not because of GCSEs. It is the year in which all the 16 year–old girls of a given zone must be prepped and handed off to all other 16 year–old boys, dubbed the Inheritants, in the same zone to fulfill their given roles of either companionship or purely sexually oriented functions within their merciless society. These girls' lives were forcefully shaped to fit the awkward and uncomfortable, 'women must always be willing' mould awaiting them at the end of their 12 year journey, from 4th year to 16th year. They were bred, not raised, to anticipate a life based purely out of service to their world. To reproduce.
And in order to ensure these girls never got too intelligent to realise the potential they had and to rid them of any choice in young sex and teenage marriages, isolation from boys early on was reinforced as well as lessons in school structured to enforce an understanding of perfection and achieving this status as an individual female ahead of their peers or 'friends' in order to portray the perfect companion for a high status, powerful man.
It's safe to say as an individual identifying as someone harshly against nearly everything presented in this novel I did not hesitate to shed a tear or two every now and then. I am legibly aware that O'Neill's intention was to instigate a focus on Freida and Isabel's relationship to portray the hurtful truth behind the dusty corners of the foundation of their growing up yet I found myself unable to do so entirely. Partially due to the fact that Isabel herself, I found to be, an absent character. I felt as if she was part of a less significant subplot despite her early introduction as another lead within the story. In hindsight, she was only ever mentioned as a real character alongside Freida's constant complaints of her inability to match her more highly ranked friend. And overall this diminished any hope of portraying any elements of a real relationship between these two from the start.
Isabel was a 2D character with no depth and no detail of her fears or passion or any real truth about her thoughts towards the system they had fallen victim to at birth; while Freida painted her the villain as easily as if she was painting a fence. I understood their friendship had disintegrated over a period of time as they grew yet I never got a real feel of their relationship beforehand and I felt I had missed out on something that I was meant to know. Like a secret prequel to the book or something to help me understand the genuine nature of Freida and Isabel's friendship. Despite all this I could not bring myself to hate Freida as a character, even though I could tell I was meant to. I saw her as a victim of circumstance which is why she wasn't like the others and her mind ignored the directions erected by their world, instead pointing her towards the direction of free thinking. It was as if she was a dead weight on a flawless society whilst perfectly exhibiting misogynism's fatal flaw. I desperately rooted for her and wanted her to be a companion, and yet I couldn't shake this feeling of unease washing over me as I did so. I felt biased. And after flipping the last page over I finally knew why. Louise O'Neill hadn't presented another point of view to me at all. I had only seen one on every single matter and situation that was at hand. I felt like I was looking at a side view when I also wanted to witness and experience a bird's eye view. But through Freida's eyes I saw a world I slowly began to identify with.
Sure, the geographical names and open attitudes had changed, yet not much else had really. The girls weren't supporting each other, instead they competed against each other. Not for incredible things to accomplish like good jobs or higher roles in society but for the BOYS. The girls were shackled at their pretty ankles to heavy bags laden with the expectations they had to exceed, the exotic, rare, biased beauty they had to exhibit, maintained weight, expensive makeup to cover all their flaws and a lifetime supply of drugs to inhibit their humanly functions. As they fought for their futures, they pushed and shoved and prodded one another's feelings in order to climb the steep, unrewarding hill to the top. Twelve–year friendships meant nothing when the claws had to come out to beg for survival.
The author portrayed the perfect setup to initiate thoughts in relation to blurred lines between our society today and her radical, fictionalised one. As much as Louise O'Neill's objective might not have been met, I think she did a much greater thing with her book. She got me thinking that if these girls were shallow, cruel and morally broken because they were designed specifically to be that way, what was our excuse?
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