Madeleine Gray has followed her hit debut Green Dot with a sharp take on complicated parenting in her second novel, Chosen Family. The 31-year-old author became an instant literary sensation last year when her first book earned a six-figure advance and drew comparisons to Bridget Jones and Fleabag.
Celebrity fans including Nigella Lawson and Gillian Anderson publicly praised Green Dot, which follows a 24-year-old woman's affair with a married man. Gray, who is gay, said Anderson's endorsement prompted a scream that was 'primal'. However, the success also brought unexpected confessions from strangers about their extramarital affairs, leaving Gray to clarify that her novel is not autobiographical.
Gray's second novel, Chosen Family, was inspired by conversations with friends who wanted children but lacked romantic partners. The story follows childhood best friends Eve and Nell from adolescence to their thirties as they attempt platonic co-parenting, complicated by one's unrequited love. Gray noted that 'chosen family is big in the queer community' and drew on her own experience of an intense friendship breakup in high school.
The novel shifts between the 2000s, when being a lesbian was stigmatised at their private girls' school, and 2024, where Eve has become 'the lesbian queen of inner west Sydney'. Gray explores how alternative family structures can be fraught, challenging the notion that non-traditional arrangements are automatically utopian.
