I vividly recall the first time I became aware of the #MeToo movement. An acquaintance revealed something startling and frightening from their past on social media, accompanied by the tag #MeToo. It didn’t take me long to discover what #MeToo meant, and over the following days and months, I had numerous discussions with friends about the movement.

The thing was (is) that every single woman I spoke to, had something to contribute to #MeToo. Every single one. We had all had incidents at parties, work, on public transport, or walking down the street, where we felt unsafe, threatened, scared. But there was another element to these discussions – how do we reconcile the behaviours that we ‘dismissed’ in the eighties and nineties against current expectations – things that did not ‘traumatise’ me as a teen, might be reportable now. Was that me, and my processing of events, or was that social conditioning? Or both?

Young Women by Jessica Moor is the #MeToo novel for Millennials. There are a bunch of novels that explore the themes that Moor tackles, but this is one of the best I’ve read.

The novel is largely being positioned as a book about female friendships because it focuses on Emily and her meeting of charismatic Tamsin. We learn that Emily has recently come out of a relationship with a man she once worked with, with the fallout both emotional and professional. Tamsin enters Emily’s life by chance, and they quickly become inseparable, with Emily wooed by Tamsin’s live-in-the-moment world of Soho parties and cocktails at impossibly expensive bars. But she is also seduced by Tamsin’s fearlessness. Tamsin tells Emily that the thing to always remember about life is that it’s ‘…not that you deserve it, it’s that no one does. Life isn’t about what you deserve. The thing that matters is what you take for yourself.’

The #MeToo element is introduced in a number of ways through both Emily and Tamsin, and their work. Moor pays careful attention to the timing of plot reveals, avoiding the story becoming overdone or unlikely. And for any reader thinking there is ‘too much’ going on in this story, pause, and consider the #MeToo stories you know of – likely to be many, likely to be happening not in isolation – suddenly Young Women will be absolutely accurate.

Aside from the central message, there’s lots to enjoy in this book – dialogue is fresh and believable; the friendship between the two women reads as authentic, and London nightlife springs off the page. I especially enjoyed the reference to pond swimming –

“There’s this thing,” she continued, “about cold water. It makes you realise, when you get in, that there’s no use for your panic. You’ve got to keep moving forward…. It’s impossible to think about anything else. You can lie awake all night tangled up in a thought, but when you get into that water, it cuts straight through all that mess.”

3.5/5 Compelling.

‘Here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re gonna have yourself a little sip of wine, then we’re going to go back to my place. I’m going full Nora Ephron and making you a carbonara, okay?’

As part of the 20 Books of Summer reading challenge, I’m comparing the Belfast summer and Melburnian winter. The results for the day I finished this book (August 3): Belfast 13°-18° and Melbourne 10°-18°.