Not Working
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3.9 • 11 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
For fans of HBO’s Girls, Bridget Jones’s Diary and Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, a laugh-out-loud, irreverent debut novel about a woman trying—not to have it all—but to figure it all out.
Twenty-something Londoner Claire has just resigned from her job without a plan—and although she is pleased, her family and friends can't seem to understand. Before too long, she manages to push away both her safe, steady, brain-surgeon boyfriend and her difficult but loving mother.
Quirky, questioning Claire hilariously navigates and comments on the emotions and minutiae of day-to-day life as only someone without the distractions of a regular routine can. Brilliantly observed, touching and wildly funny, Not Working is the story of a life unraveling and a novel that skewers the questions that have been keeping us all awake at night.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This won’t be the hardest-hitting novel you’ll ever read, but it may be the most gloriously honest. Lisa Owens takes what should be a wonderfully ordinary tale—26-year-old Claire quits her dull job and flounders in unemployment—and turns it into a riotous examination of how life’s agonising minutiae takes over when you’re without purpose. Fittingly, it’s the book’s familiar little moments—the tiny lies we tell to lubricate awkward social situations, the incandescent rage a poorly made latte can generate—that provide the greatest joy. In scenes with Claire’s charming, supportive boyfriend Luke, Not Working sparkles as an honest, sympathetic portrait of how joblessness can test a couple’s commitment.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Owens's stellar debut novel, composed of vignettes, concerns recently unemployed 20-something Londoner Claire Flannery, who has quit her communications job in an attempt to find her purpose. Claire has the luxury to do this thanks to some savings and her patient boyfriend, Luke, a brain surgeon in training with whom Claire owns a home. As her unemployment begins to stretch over several months, Claire finds herself plagued with doubts, such as her jealousy at Luke's flirtatious colleague Fiona and her wilting at people's disapproving attitudes toward her hiatus. Finding herself in stasis after a few half-attempts at job searching, Claire drinks too much at times and plunges into petulant states in which she starts arguments fueled by her insecurities. Owens's protagonist may not always be likable, but this makes her all the more relatable. The author summons an ugly truth in the way Claire's self-doubts test loved ones and turn otherwise fine situations unpleasant. Though the novel resolves in an inevitable way, this doesn't detract from Owens's ability to take the potentially trite problem-of-the-privileged trope and deftly craft it into readable fun.
Customer Reviews
Entertaining!
This book has been an entertaining way to spend an evening. I enjoyed the author's style and wit and would happily recommend this book to friends.