SELF CARE

Tensions grow between the co-founders of a hot, womencentric startup in this hyper-timely—and unexpectedly heartfelt—satire of #girlboss culture and the wellness industrial complex.

Maren and Devin are the co-founders of Richual, a social network for women. In addition to tracking your self-care habits—minutes meditated, REM sleep slept, water consumed—it was, Maren explains, the “digital sanctuary where you went to unload your pain,” mostly in the form of yoga selfies. In the unofficial org chart of Richual, it is Maren’s job to be competent and Devin’s job to be rich, charismatic, and thin. "More than work wives," Maren muses, "Devin and I were sisters." And the company is a perfect mashup of their comparative ideologies, Maren’s commitment to global social justice paired with Devin’s passion for self-care. But as the company comes under a series of extremely 2020 stresses—the novel opens with a PR disaster brought on by one of Maren’s ill-conceived tweets and culminates in a distinctly #MeToo–era crisis—their visions of what a feminist company can and should be become increasingly incompatible. Richual is a stand-in for any number of real women-led companies that sell female empowerment as an affordable luxury, and Stein sets up both the dream and the failings of this breed of corporate feminism with admirable nuance. But the book is smarter than its characters, who are exactly who you expect them to be, right down to the details meant to complicate them. This hardly takes away from the fun of the novel, which is compulsively readable, occasionally brilliant (a Vogue slideshow about their office is titled “Workplace as Vulva—And Why Not?”), and studded with genuine insight into the relationship between modern wellness and dormant rage. But the book—which leans heavily on references in lieu of precise observations—is ultimately too broad to have much bite.

It’s rich territory, if not entirely mined.