Recently published by Pushkin but previously out elsewhere in 2015, it is thanks to Netgalley that I had the chance to read this lovely short tale of Recently published by Pushkin but previously out elsewhere in 2015, it is thanks to Netgalley that I had the chance to read this lovely short tale of a miserable woman in a mundane existence who ponders the point of life – and then a little way in it changes into something quite different.
Trouble is, to talk about it is to explain it – and totally spoil it. Our main character is Josephine the Average Jo, in a terrible sublet apartment where her and her husband (also an average Jo) seem to be scraping through life in a series of terrible incidents in their average jobs. She finds any job going, and isn’t meant to ask what her data entry is for. Most people in her building seems to be average too – similar outfits, similar hair, similar lunch, similar offices. Turns out, it’s not just any old data entry job. Turns out, she might be playing god without realising it – not that anything is ever really explained: it just is.
This could easily be a play – almost a panto. There are caricatures rather than characters, with silly names, and there are only a few set changes needed – work / terrible apartment / park / diner (and repeat in any order). Her boss is rude and unpleasant, her Dolly Parton / Barbie-esque work colleague well-meaning, the server from the diner an Oracle. Jo is all of us, wanting more from life and dreaming of the future which she once thought would be easy – happy in her job, relationship, owning their own place and starting a family. Yet her life is drab and stark. There are so many little details which will resonate with a readership who work in an office that it would be funny if it weren’t so depressing.
Hope seems far away in this story, but once Jo starts to realise more and more about her bureaucratic role, it starts to become much more sinister as well as hopeful all at once. It feels so Philip K Dick to me, and lots of other reviewers cite Kafka. It becomes more than her story, and the plot quickens and thickens at this point, no longer just detailing what happens to her, but what she can make happen – or not.
I read it swiftly, and I think it has the right balance of general plot and then More. Any more depressive and slightly confusing episodes of her life and I would have given up before I got to the Substance – even if normally I would devour anything that Ursula le Guin recommends. But it is totally worth those parts by the end, and everything is beautifully proportioned – even if I can’t really where else the beauty of the title is meant to be.
Give this a try if you like sci-fi things like Adjustment Bureau, Atwood, Dick, Kafka, Keyes…...more
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