Green Dot by Madeleine Gray

Hera Stephen is navigating her mid-twenties, juggling a low-paying job as a comment moderator in a chilly newsroom by day and exploring Sydney with her two best friends by night. Despite her efforts, she’s accumulated more hangovers than savings, an ex-girlfriend, and a collection of well-worn novels. While her peers seem to seamlessly transition into adulthood, Hera feels torn between consciously rejecting conventional success to carve her unique path and fearing she’s merely being left behind.

Everything changes when she meets Arthur, an older, married colleague. Drawn to the ordinary happiness he symbolizes, Hera plunges into a workplace romance, fully aware it’s doomed from the start. With a uniquely intimate and daring voice, Madeleine Gray presents an irresistible, messy love story in Green Dot. This novel explores the seductive pull of unattainable desires, the joys and struggles of coming of age in the twenty-first century, and the winding, often humorous journey of self-discovery.

“I am obsessed with this book. I am obsessed with Hera, her dad, her friends, her dog. Hera’s perspective is a blend of humor, hope, darkness, and tenderness that makes life appear both absurd and beautiful. Green Dot is a love story about the foolishness, hilarity, and sheer beauty of life. I wish I could read it forever.” – Laura McPhee-Browne, author of Cherry Beach

“Laugh-out-loud funny and beautifully, brutally relatable, Green Dot is a book that will linger with me for a long time.” – Ewa Ramsey, author of The Morbids

“Incredibly funny and strikingly real, this debut novel perfectly captures the spirit of our times.” – Brigid Delaney, author of Reasons Not to Worry and Wellmania

Author Biography:

Madeleine Gray is a writer and critic from Sydney. She has written arts criticism for SRB, Overland, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, etc. In 2019 she was a CA-SRB Emerging Critic, and in 2021 she was a finalist for the Walkley Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism, a finalist for the Woollahra Digital Literary Non-fiction award, and a recipient of a Neilma Sidney Literary Travel grant. She has an MSt in English from the University of Oxford and is a current doctoral candidate at the University of Manchester, researching contemporary women’s autobiographical literary theory. Green Dot is her first novel.