This is a book about a recession. In it, a young woman works a job she hates and is extremely grateful for. It’s a story humming with economic anxiety. This part made me laugh:
Early on he (her boss) called me his rock star. This was funny to me, since in actuality rock stars get onstage, perform, fuck many girls, wreck the hotel room. I, meanwhile, sweated competence, a hungry efficiency.
How often have I sweated competence! OFTEN. It’s curious how very few books are written about office jobs, given so many people spend so much of their lives in them. It’s like we don’t think it’s a real part of our life.
I also really like this part:
All my life, when I imagined the future, I thought of each of us as small atoms, individuated, settling down, getting a flat somewhere, wearing out one job and then another, like successive pairs of shoes. You grew up, you were found a person to marry, you went sullenly to work, you kept a house running, you did the requisite paperwork or paid the price, and then for two hours of the day you might cultivate a pastime, like yelling at sports on the television or forcing the lawn into submission. It took bravery to imagine something even slightly different, let alone follow that imagining through.
Ouch.
One piece of whining, there was a lot of weirdly specific descriptions of food. Try this:
Some people find it harder to forgive you for not actually being wrong, Tig had said in her Tig way over bowls of bisque served with ragged pieces of country loaf.
?!? ragged pieces ?!? country loaf !?!