Book review: Am I Normal Yet?

Holly Bourne – Am I Normal Yet?

The first in a trilogy focusing on the three members of the Spinster Club, Am I Normal Yet? introduces us to sixteen-year-old Evie, who’s started college away from most of the people who knew her as ‘that mental girl’, the one whose OCD and anxiety led her to be hospitalised and miss out on what she thinks of as crucial teen experiences. Now she’s in recovery – reducing her medication, developing strategies for addressing her compulsive worries and the attendant behaviour, and getting ready to be ‘normal’. Which means hanging out with her new friends, Lottie and Amber; going on dates, even if her first one leads to the boy in question sleeping with someone else at the party; and looking towards the future. But as her medication decreases, some of Evie’s symptoms return, and she develops new ones. And isn’t it true that love makes you crazy anyway?

Despite the heavy subject matter – this book is about mental health and feminism and the difficulties of fighting the patriarchy while also being a teenage girl who quite likes boys – this is a marvellous read, dancing between hilarious and painfully authentic. Evie’s voice is spot on, and she and her new friends discuss feminist issues without ever sounding preachy or self-righteous. The structural inequalities and the gendered stereotypes that they’re facing aren’t about women in boardrooms – they’re directly related to the ways many of the guys they know treat them, and how they treat those guys, too. This is a smart, funny, realistic look at what it means to be a girl today, and what it means to be ‘normal’. It offers up sharp insights into how we are newly comfortable talking about mental illness – but still unwilling to deal with the lived experience of it. It manages to be both readable and thought-provoking, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.