The New Me
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3.8 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
'Terrific. So funny' Zadie Smith
'Monstrously depressing but so comic and well observed that I didn't really mind .... It is great' Dolly Alderton
'A dark comedy of female rage' Catherine Lacey
'Brilliant. For fans of Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation' Pandora Sykes
'Funny, shocking, clever, and hugely entertaining' Roddy Doyle
'A definitive work of milennial literature' Jia Tolentino
'The best thing I've read in years' Emma Jane Unsworth
'Vicious ... hilariously spot on' Guardian
In a windowless office, a woman explains something from her real, nonwork life - about the frustration and indignity of returning her online shopping - to her colleagues. One wears a topknot. Another checks her pedometer.
Watching them all is Millie. Thirty-years-old and an eternal temp, she says almost nothing, almost all of the time.
But then the possibility of a permanent job arises. Will it bring the new life Millie is envisioning - one involving a gym membership, a book club, and a lot less beer and TV - finally within reach? Or will it reveal just how hollow that vision has become?
'Made me laugh and cry enough times to feel completely reborn' The Paris Review
'A definite work of millennial literature. Wretchedly riveting, with the sick, obsessive pleasure of looking under a bandage at a wound' The New Yorker
'So darkly funny and acutely observed that it feels like a documentary' Andrew McMillan
'Anyone who has ever felt like their life is going nowhere - and to make it worse, going nowhere in an achingly slow manner - will recognize themselves' Nylon
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Butler's incisive latest (following Jillian) opens in winter in Chicago, where 30-year-old Millie is sweating inside her coat as she rides the crowded train to her temp position at the Lisa Hopper interior design showroom, where the uptight senior receptionist Karen calls her Maddie, and she gets paid $12 an hour to clip together mailers and answer the phone. Millie's life is deeply stagnant besides her temp position, she has one awful friend named Sarah, little to no social life, and a deep dependency on the crime show Forensic Files, which she watches nightly. It's clear to Millie that something must change. When she receives an innocuous email from her temp agency, Millie mistakes it for an impending job offer, and throws herself into revamping her life. In short chapters, readers are treated to insights into the lives of the other women at Lisa Hopper, especially Karen, who has different plans for Millie's future than what Millie is expecting. Though Millie's mundane and self-destructive despondence sometimes feels all too familiar, Butler has nonetheless created an disquieting heroine with an indelible voice. Butler is a sharp and observant writer, who takes to task the tragicomedy of modern capitalism.)
Customer Reviews
Wonderfully honest
A most enjoyable read.
Perfectly written and, at last, an honest appraisal of living at a certain time of everyone’s life.
Surely. Well, maybe.
Engaging ultimately enjoyable.
The New Me
The author is one of America’s leading novelists under 35 according to Granta
The New Me is a satire about a disaffected millennial female working in dead end low paying job in large US city while supported financially by her parents.
I’m just a grumpy old white guy but I thought that narrative well had been drained well and truly dry by Lena Dunham.
Perhaps it’s a satire about Lena Dunham’s portrayal of a disaffected millennial female working in dead end low paying job in large US city while supported financially by her parents?
In either case, the first person narrative is delivered in the relentless jack hammer style of a stand-up comic, the savagely amusing observations and descriptions insufficient to leaven the overall mood.
On a positive note, Ms Butler is a talented wordsmith and the text is mercifully short.
2.5 stars