Help Wanted
A Barack Obama Reading Pick 2024
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3.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
* A NEW YORK TIMES Book Review Editors' Choice * A VOGUE, VULTURE, ELLE, NEW YORKER and ECONOMIST Best Book of the Year * A TIME Must-Read Book of 2024
'Superb' GUARDIAN
'Poignant, funny, stealthily ambitious' THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tightly plotted, slyly caustic and often very funny' DAILY MAIL
When the store manager at an upstate New York superstore announces he's leaving, the motley crew members of Team Movement take the news surprisingly well. Overworked and exhausted, they spend their early morning shifts scheming about their jobs and their futures. Now is their only chance to get their hated line manager Meredith promoted up and away from them. And then one of them can replace her - but who will it be?
'Help Wanted is like a great nineteenth-century novel about now' ELIF BATUMAN, author of The Idiot
'Help Wanted held me from its first page' TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER, author of The Long Island Compromise
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Waldman's perceptive sophomore novel (after The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.) centers on the employees of a big-box store in Upstate New York. Nine of them are a part of the Movement team, arriving at four a.m. to unload trucks, unpack boxes, and stock the shelves before the store opens. Team manager Meredith, who's under pressure from corporate headquarters to maintain the department's budget, alienates the others by refusing requests for additional work hours or raises, contributing to their struggles to make ends meet. When the store manager announces he's transferring to another location, and that corporate will be coming to interview employees to decide which team manager will take his role, Movement member Val sees an opportunity to get rid of Meredith by pushing to promote her. Val and the other team members put the plan in action, and several of them begin fantasizing about a promotion. Though Waldman touches only briefly on the employees' personal lives, making it difficult to keep all the characters straight, the narrative builds to a satisfying and surprising conclusion. It's a bracing and worthwhile glimpse of the high stakes faced by low-wage workers.
