Dead-end jobs in big box stores, people trudging through their just-under-40-hours each week without benefits or enough of a paycheck to buy a house or a new car, or any car at all, sounds like a dreary but true story.
There is a lot of truth in Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted about the overnight inventory crew in one such store, but it's the opposite of a dreary book. The individual characters are fascinating, with stories to make a reader want them all to have a better shot. Even the ones who appear to be losers are stronger, more resilient and more deserving than the sad sack who shoplifted fish in the beginning of a Jonathan Franzen novel, and he was far above them in class structure.
Most of the crew has been together for some time. One of the department's strengths is low turnover. Their boss hasn't been with them long, though. Meredith is a would-be corporate ladder climber who took the position as a way to become store manager. She has not fit in well. She's bossy and doesn't understand how things work to get the job done.
But when it looks like they might be able to get rid of her if she becomes store manager when that position opens up, well, the scheming is as grand as anything in any other darkly comic novel, film or television program.
First, they have to get on the same page. Everyone dislikes Meredith, so how can they lie about how great she has been to get rid of her? Some in the group have to be convinced that this is how they can get rid of her. Because a store manager won't be all up in their business the way a department manager is.
And if they succeed in this, who among them is going to replace her? The current store manager, a nice enough guy who is being promoted, can't get a definitive answer from any of them. That no one seems a clear-cut leader makes the choice even more difficult. There are at least three with potential, but there are strikes against them. One fell into bad luck and then did time. Not everyone has a GED, let alone further education. Most of them don't believe in themselves and the ones who do aren't taking a realistic look at themselves.
As the campaign to get Meredith off their backs heads toward corporate executives coming to interview them, the ups and downs of each character's journey take both expected and surprising turns. Some look like they've cooked their own goose, but then the craziness of corporate think has its way.
Help Wanted is a welcome way to not only marvel at how different corporate think is from the real world most of us occupy. It also is a way to look at the lives of people who struggle to make basic ends meet, from commuting to their poorly paying job that demands so much, to being there for family and what happens if they need health care. The reader is invited into their world and given the chance to see how easy it would be for them to give up, and how many of them do not. They carry on. They've got a lot of heart, and so does the author in this tale of their lives.
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Tuesday is new book day! The following blurbs are from the publishers. Links are to DebtorsPrison’s The Literate Lizard online bookstore.
Raffi works in an observational cosmology lab, searching for dark matter and trying to hide how little they understand their own research. Every chance they get, they escape to see Britt, a queer sculptor who fascinates them for reasons they also don’t—or won’t—understand. As Raffi’s carefully constructed life begins to collapse, they become increasingly fixated on the multiverse and the idea that somewhere, there might be a universe where they mean as much to Britt as she does to them…and just like that, Raffi and Britt are thirteen years old, best friends and maybe something more.
This spellbinding novel by bestselling author Ann Napolitano is a poignant reminder of how connected we are to those we love, even when we cannot find the words to say it
From the author of This Is One Way to Dance, linked genre-queer short stories braided with images and ephemera explore the experiences of growing up and living as a diasporic Gujarati woman searching for home.
Mihály and Erzsi are on honeymoon in Italy. Mihály has recently joined the respectable family firm in Budapest, but as his gaze passes over the mysterious back-alleys of Venice, memories of his bohemian past reawaken his old desire to wander.
When bride and groom become separated at a provincial train station, Mihály embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome, where he must reckon with both his past and his future.
Young Wang has received plenty of wisdom from his beloved uncle: don’t take life too seriously, get out on the road when you can, and everyone gets just seven great loves in their life—so don’t blow it. This last one sticks with Young as he is an obsessive cataloger of his life: movies watched, favorite albums . . . all filtered through Chinese numerology and superstition. He finds meaning in almost everything, for which his two best friends endlessly tease him. But then, at the end of 1995, when Young is at New York University, he meets Erena.
Real Americans begins on the precipice of Y2K in New York City, when twenty-two-year-old Lily Chen, an unpaid intern at a slick media company, meets Matthew. Matthew is everything Lily is not: easygoing and effortlessly attractive, a native East Coaster, and, most notably, heir to a vast pharmaceutical empire. Lily couldn't be more different: flat-broke, raised in Tampa, the only child of scientists who fled Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Despite all this, Lily and Matthew fall in love.
Her body used to work perfectly. For years, she tallied her orgasms, maintained a Top Humps list, and rated men on whether they excited her more mentally or physically—all with the purpose of finding the ideal love match.
Now, as she moves into her thirties and is settled down with Serious Boyfriend Number Three, she’s run into a problem.
Sex hurts.
Growing up outside a US military base in South Korea in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, Insu--the son of a Korean mother and a German father enlisted in the US Army--spends his days with his "half and half" friends skipping school, selling scavenged Western goods on the black market, watching Hollywood movies, and testing the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. When he hears a legend that water collected in a human skull will cure any sickness, he vows to dig up a skull in order to heal his ailing Big Uncle, a geomancer who has been exiled by the family to a mountain cave to die.
Insu's quest takes him and his friends on a sprawling, wild journey into some of South Korea's darkest corners, opening them up to a fantastical world beyond their grasp.
The Funeral Cryer long ago accepted the mundane realities of her life: avoided by fellow villagers because of the stigma attached to her job and underappreciated by her husband, whose fecklessness has pushed the couple close to the brink of breakup. But just when things couldn't be bleaker, she takes a leap of faith--and in so doing, things start to take a surprising turn for the better.
Dark, moving and wry, The Funeral Cryer is both an illuminating depiction of a "left behind" society--and proof that it's never too late to change your life.
This is a story of hidden gay and trans relationships, the effects of a near-fatal accident, and an oppressed childhood, where Ivana Bodrožić tackles the issues addressed in her previous works—issues of otherness, identity and gender, pain and guilt, injustice and violence.
It’s the new millennium and the anxiety of midlife is creeping up on Sam Singer, a thirty-seven-year-old art advisor. Fed up with his partner and his life in New York, Sam flies to Berlin to attend a gallery opening. There he finds a once-divided city facing an identity crisis of its own.
The talented classical cellist Nabil always imagined a world where music and art govern everyday life. After being attacked in his hometown in Iraq and not being able to play music, Nabil decides to emigrate to Europe, where he thinks he can fit into society better. He muses about music, the Utopian City as envisioned by philosopher al-Farabi, and if there is any place that will meet his ideals. When Nabil meets Fanny and they become lovers, she tries to help him get back on his feet but he struggles to accept it. Ali Bader uses Nabil's story to explore an artist's place in the world and to subtly critique both Iraqi and European societies.
Originally published in Arabic in 2016 during the peak of migration from the Middle East to Europe, Musician in the Clouds explores global migration in a postcolonial world, the impacts of extremism, and what it means to belong somewhere. This translation includes the author's newly updated novel, published in 2023, and an original interview between the author and translator about the book.
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