Harriet the Spy is a 1964 childrens’ book about a little girl who snoops relentlessly on her neighbours. Harriet Gibsone did the same thing when she was young. Now in her late 30s, she still shares with the fictional Harriet a powerful imagination and endless fascination with others. Harriet the Spy was banned in a number of American schools; apparently morally upright people didn’t approve of watchful girls trying to figure out the world on their own terms. I love these characters, nurturing as they do some feeling of control in a world where they do not have any.
Is This OK? is a memoir, full of finely told stories that were once secrets existing only in the writer’s mind; addictions, obsessions, weirdnesses. Gibsone came of age at the same time as the internet, her own development shaped by its strange currents. She chooses episodes from her life and makes some of them funny – laugh-out-loud-on-the-train funny; some of them are frightening and sad. Many illuminate a bigger truth about living at this peculiar time and in the grey area between the online and offline worlds. That is, of course, where many of us spend hours each day, without fully realising it, even as researchers warn us of the negative impact on self-esteem and mental health.
We didn’t know all of that when we first went online, back when the internet seemed to offer a thrilling sort of social freedom. In 2001, when Gibsone was 14, she discovered MSN messenger, which rapidly became, as she puts it, “an urgent state of being”. She devoted herself to chatting online, pretending to be older, more sexual, and simply different from the awkward young woman she really was. This pattern continued as the platforms multiplied with each passing year; “As a woman prone to slow reaction times and meekness in real life, I could now partake in meaningful conversations and have an instant connection to someone without the threat of tending to them physically.”
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.
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.
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.
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