“I didn’t know how much of the truth to tell, or how to tell it,” says Christina, the protagonist single mum of The Confidence Woman who’s running an online scam just to find a place of her own. Fortunately, Sophie Quick knows perfectly how much truth to reveal to make her debut novel funny and gently heartrending.
Christina’s dual identity is the core of this novel’s comedy. Christina crafts a whole second identity for herself as Dr Ruth who works as a corporate coach – or rather is “interested in peak human performance, psychology, neuroscience and leadership”. It sounds exactly like the brand of guff an aspiring corporate coach would flex on their LinkedIn profile.
Through Dr Ruth there is a side-eye on influencer culture. Take personal-brand-conscious Adam who confesses to wanting his yoga videos free of “larger ladies” and that the woo-woo tea he’s been enthusiastically endorsing “smells funky”, coming not from Japan but Wisconsin. When clients make these bitchy slips, Dr Ruth springs her trap and hits record. She asks her pretentious victims for hush money or she’ll send incriminating videos to TV producers or insulted co-workers or, even worse, post them on socials as mirrors of just how horrible they really are.
The scammer keeps our sympathy due to Christina’s need for a stable home for her son, Sam, as they are caught in that unattainable Australian dream of bricks and mortar in a housing affordability crisis. But there is a bigger fish for Dr Ruth/Christina that she just may be able to scam enough from to purchase their much-desired townhouse.
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When she’s shaming the shamans, Quick has the juiciest satire. Her take on parenting is funny too and her line-by-line gags shine.
Quick’s experience as a copywriter makes for witty writing throughout. Christina’s quest for a home of her own is in contrast to her influencer victims who “impulse-purchased a boat”. She’s just an online Robin Hood stealing from the rich and giving to the needy – well, herself. The building of a backstory for Christina while grounding the character slows the book because the unfolding story is where the genuine LOLs are.
The freedom of representing yourself as anyone onscreen enables Christina’s scamming as she creates whole identities with their own websites and fake academic publications. It is only possible in a digital world where meeting online is the default and no one is looking too closely at what happens offscreen. Christina exults in the empowering nature of her scams. When she successfully blackmails she says, “I was active and agile … a champion … a witch … a winner.” Our culture of success or, more importantly, the appearance of success is what Quick skewers most effectively. She digs in that splinter of doubt that says: could your apparently super-successful therapist actually just be living in a granny flat and chugging Aldi whisky after putting their kid to bed?
A moment of reckoning for Christina comes when one of her clients finds her out and forces her to turn on her camera and reveal her small granny flat. The human details spill out: the drying undies, Sam’s pictures, the feet of clay we hide inside those WFH slippers. It is an intimate, almost humiliating moment, but Quick suggests real connection comes through this vulnerability and honesty. In this arch satire of the superficiality of success and online deception – where you fake it until you break it – Christina stands out as a perfect creation, and Quick as an exciting new voice.
The Confidence Woman, Sophie Quick
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781761470844
Format: Paperback
Pages: 382pp
Price: $32.99
Publication: 1 April 2025
