writing capitalist poetry for wellness and wealth

Jane Dorner is a young New York public relations professional who vacillates between her low-level depression and her self-loathing. She is okay at her PR job, where she tries to get young women with some Instagram fame or disposable income interested in her clients and their dubious wellness products, or she’s okay at it when she’s actually doing it. Which she hasn’t been lately, as she’s been spending too much time online stalking her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.

When she gets called out on her lack of accomplishments at work, she knows she has to find something that will get her noticed in the wellness industry, and it has to be big. And that’s when she finds Cass.

Jane doesn’t know at first that she’s found Cass. She just knows that there is an Instagram account called FortPath that features photos of nature in all its beauty, simple meals, and a beautiful woman with exquisite skin. Jane thinks she may have found just the ticket. She emails FortPath and accepts an invitation for a weekend retreat, and she packs her bags and heads out.

Once there, Jane meets Tom, who had offered the invitation. But more importantly, she meets Cass, the dewy-skinned beauty from their social media. It’s Cass who is the wellness expert, talking about how to overcome fear and leading meditations and giving big hugs. And the more that Jane spends in her presence, the more she knows that Cass is the product she can monetize.

But can Jane get Tom on board with her ideas for FortPath, and is Cass willing to become the wellness guru that everyone has been looking for? And most important for Jane, will making Cass the sensation she can be finally make Jane happy with who she is?

The Glow is a darkly funny look at the wellness industry and the women who flock to it. Debut novelist Jessie Gaynor has crafted a satire of modern times with a little heart and more than a little heartlessness as a publicist and a meditation teacher try to cash in on women’s insecurities and boredom. We’ve all seen the social media hashtags, passed by the ads for overpriced face serums, and paged through the glossy magazines to see the beautiful people we are supposed to want to emulate. This novel turns all that inside out, to see behind the curtain of a hungry industry.

I really enjoyed The Glow. It’s snarky and self-aware and honest in unexpected ways. There were times when these characters were difficult to like, as they could all be selfish in their own ways. For much of the book they were all trying to find their way in a world that had rejected them, but as the story went on, they all seemed to find paths that fed the well of emptiness within them. There is a lot of darkness to the humor, much of which comes from pain, and maybe that’s what makes it hard to read at moments, that it cuts a little too close to the bone.

But while I was struggling with that pain, I also could not set this book aside. I had to keep reading. I had to know what was going to happen to these characters. Like an extreme wellness journey, this book is painful and challenging, but worth it in the end.

Egalleys for The Glow were provided by Random House through NetGalley, with many thanks.