Alice Robinson’s new novel combines speculative fiction with domestic fiction to explore a question; how much control do we really have of our own lives?
My first thought after I finished reading If You Go (2024) was that I was fucked. I had somehow elected to read one of the hardest books to ever describe or review without spoiling it. When describing it to friends, it was hard not to regurgitate the blurb. At first, I thought that I was simply way out of my depth, and overestimating my writing capabilities. However, at Alice Robinson’s Gleebooks talk I realised that this issue plagues the author too.
The basic premise of If You Go is that a woman named Esther wakes up with a breathing tube down her throat in an abandoned building. She is accompanied by Grace who seems to have nefarious intentions. Esther’s life, from her childhood to marriage to divorce to the current timeline, the reader follows Esther on her journey to find out why she is here in this empty building, who Grace is, and why she can’t leave.
The Gleebooks talk was moderated by Australian author and critic James Bradley. Together, Bradley and Robinson spent the next hour carefully navigating the plot of If You Go without spoiling its twists and turns, a rather impressive accomplishment considering the difficulty to discuss without revealing the key plot points.
As for writer Briohny Doyle, whose quote is printed on the back cover, Robinson is “a master of domestic sci-fi”. This quote reiterates how this novel expands the science fiction genre from the typical depiction of a technology-focused future where women can often be left behind. Robinson discussed this idea of a ‘domestic sci-fi’ genre, explaining that “much of the intricacies of what happens to women is within the house, behind closed doors” and by combining the everyday lives of women with an exploration of the futuristic society, we are able to experience new side of sci-fi, one that focuses on mothers and children.
When Robinson and Bradley discussed the less spoilery elements of the novel, Alice was able to capture its essence after this question was posed; to what extent can individuals be the architects of their own lives, against the grand scheme of things?
One of the novel’s most jarring elements is its exploration of how the protagonist’s choices and upbringing impacts the lives of the people around her, mainly her husband, and her children. The way that Robinson was able to integrate existential questions into a eerie sci-fi story, rendering it memoir-like, is what made it so compelling to read.
Not only did Robinson and Bradley discuss the novel, but they also shared details about the craft of writing to help fellow writers. They focused specifically on the idea of ‘hot material’ and the importance of a ‘doom playlist’. Robinson said that writers typically have something which is a kind of ‘hot material’, material they can always come back to, followed by the fact that ‘her hot material happened to be abandoning mothers’. She told the audience to ask themselves, “what is it that you can speak about with authority in the world?” which I found to be brilliant insight for any struggling or budding writer.
Robinson also said that having a playlist helps, sharing that for this novel, Spotify’s ‘sad classical’ playlist became her best friend during the writing process. However she also warned that you may end up hating the playlist because of this association with the entire process, especially post-writing, saying that the ‘sad classical’ playlist became her enemy upon the completion of her novel.
The part of the conversation that resonated most with me was during the Q&A section. One audience member asked a question about how she deals with the fact that her children might view her differently because of this novel, and how writers balance between writing about their own life versus the ethical implications of sharing intimate details. This concept has been something I’ve struggled with a lot previously, writing and scraping multiple articles and stories because I felt like I was doing something wrong – so to hear this being discussed by a published, award-winning author was surreal.
Robinson closed off the intimate conversation by explaining that different authors have different levels of truth in their writing and that it is all completely personal, and that each writer can choose their own boundaries.
“My experience in the real world will have to stand for something”, Robinson said, which I found a beautiful sentiment to end the discussion on.
If You Go was released in bookstores June 25 and I definitely recommend you read it – just be prepared for the existential crisis that may follow.