Book Review: "The New Me" by Halle Butler

When I talk about modern day satire, I will often talk about writers such as Anne Tyler with her books that I used to read at university and one of her more recent ones entitled “The Redhead By the Side of the Road” which I thought was a fantastic look at modern day responsibility and how we see the difference between ‘living’ and ‘existing’. I could mention a few authors such as: Bret Easton Ellis if it were the late 20th century, Chuck Palahniuk, Matt Haig and his clever wit on the themes and metaphors of loneliness and disconnection and there are recent Man Booker Prize Winners such as Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout” (which actually won the prize whilst I was in university, I remember wholeheartedly opposing it. It was nowhere near as good as the other shortlisted novels) and obviously, the brilliance of the international Man Booker Prize winner, Han Kang’s “The Vegetarian”. Modern Day satire has been around for as long as realism has been around, since the days of Virginia Woolf and her contemporaries - the 20th and 21st centuries seem to be filled with things that are ‘fair game’ to make fun of in the darkest ways possible.

This book is about a woman called Millie and she has just started a new job. She seems to have this thing for scrutinising the other women. From the woman on the train who has her hat poking into Millie’s face to the woman at the office named Karen who seems to have a fake smile and a passion for condescension. Millie narrates the first few chapters before the narrative shifts into third person and the interesting thing is that within this shift, we go from identifying with Millie to having a more critical eye of her. In the third person shift, we get to see her flaws and exactly what is holding her back in her life. I am not going to lie to you when I say that I identified with her anger towards the old lady in front of her as I too have had these afflictions and confrontations with other people on public transport. Once you identify with her, as a character you start to support nearly everything she does, even if from the outside it would not look as good or professional to do so.

I loved the way that this was written because it was different to your usual satire written in first person exclusively or in third person exclusively. I also think that the use of actual humour and jokes being more reserved and the use of anger and irritation more apparent was a nice change from the normal. I was avidly impressed with the character being so realistic of a female in the modern day - altogether but not quite there. I feel like I not only identified with Millie’s resentment for other people, but I also liked the way in which she was trying to present outwardly that she had something worth the new job she was in. Her comments on the woman named Karen seriously shows how she was keeping her cool within the workplace. Between this and a woman named Kristen (whom I shall not reveal the function of due to spoilers), Millie seems not to be the only woman in the world who feels the way she does. This is yet another refreshing thing about the book - it is not depicting the main character as being ‘different’ or ‘edgy’. In fact, this character is supposed to be representative of a lot of people, including other characters in the book.

So, in conclusion - this book is a successful subversion from the regular equation for modern realist satire.