Celebrities raved about her debut novel. Now Madeleine Gray is back

Rewind two years, when Green Dot was practically part of the summer scenery – wedged into beach bags, sunning itself on shelves and earning a reputation as the Australian debut of the season. Madeleine Gray’s first novel, a whip-smart, melancholy-funny story about a young comment moderator who has an affair with an older newsroom colleague, arrived with rare momentum. Word of mouth spread, booksellers championed it, and the celebrity praise rolled in: Nigella Lawson called Gray “a major talent”, while Gillian Anderson deemed her “a dazzling writer”.

Behind the scenes, things had moved just as quickly: a six-figure deal, a six-way auction for the screen rights (now in development with the BBC and British production company Drama Republic, behind Netflix’s One Day). The novel won the Australian Book Industry Award for Best New Writing and the Russell Prize for Humour Writing, and was shortlisted for Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, missing out to Asako Yuzuki’s juggernaut Butter.

Fast-forward to now, and Gray is back with her second novel, Chosen Family. The “sophomore slump” – that grim little spectre hovering over any successful debut – is very real, she says, though in her case it helped sharpen to resolve to push her work somewhere new.

“I think anyone who wouldn’t feel extra pressure after the first one goes well would be superhuman. I’ve yet to meet that person,” Gray, 31, says. “There was obviously a lot more pressure because I am very lucky in that I have a devoted readership now. Green Dot fans are very vehement, which I love. I didn’t want to disappoint readers, but also, for me, I didn’t want to write the same book twice. I needed to go in a new direction that created a different world.”

Yet the familiar hallmarks – funny, contemporary and attuned to the subtle negotiations that shape friendships and first loves – are all in Chosen Family. The novel unfolds over nearly two decades, tracing the ever-shifting dynamic between two women, Eve Bowman and Nell Argall. They meet at their elite all-girls school in Sydney: both bright, both misfits, both instantly tethered to one another. It’s a relationship that saves them as much as it threatens to unmoor them, particularly as they wrestle with the borders between friendship and romance. When they reconnect at university, the dynamic tilts again, and they decide to raise a child together. “I want to do it with you, Nell. I want us to be best friends who raise a child together,” Eve tells her. The push and pull of their connection sits at the centre of the novel, a bond constantly recalibrating as Lake grows into a preternaturally perceptive child.