Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth review – life in the Instagram age

Early on in Adults, protagonist Jenny agonises over a caption for an Instagram post of a croissant. She auditions various phrases and hashtags, messaging her long-suffering friend Kelly for her input. Eventually, she posts the photo, and the waiting begins: “It’s like that conundrum of the tree falling in the empty forest, ” Jenny muses. “Does it make a sound if there’s no one there? If you put something on social media and no one likes it, do you even exist? ” It’s a scene that will make many readers wince, in a novel that acutely captures the anxious ruminations of a life lived online. Jenny is 35. She works for an online magazine, Foof – “as awful as it sounds” – and has a famous photographer boyfriend. She is obsessed with Suzy Brambles, an Instagram influencer whose “kickboxing lessons and almond eyes” induce compulsive envy. She has friends on whom she depends rather too much, and neglects and mistreats Kelly in particular. Jenny gets sucked into ever more frenetic online dramas, and her social media habit begins to have a corrosive effect.