Not Working
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3.6 • 17 Ratings
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'Lisa Owens is a comedy genius' Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals
'Laugh-out-loud funny' Observer
'Insanely funny but also moving and true' Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall
'A deadpan comic debut for the procrastination generation' Guardian
Now and again we all lie awake wondering what on earth we're doing with our lives . . . don't we?
Claire Flannery has had more than a few sleepless nights lately. Maybe she shouldn't have walked out of her job with no idea what to do next. Maybe she should think before she speaks -- and maybe then her mother would start returning her calls. Maybe she should be spending more time going to art galleries, or reading up on current affairs, and less time in her pyjamas, entering competitions on the internet. Then again, maybe the perfect solution to life's problems only arises when you stop looking for it . . .
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.
