03/28/2016
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. (May)
Not Working: A Novel
Narrated by Tuppence Middleton
Lisa OwensUnabridged — 6 hours, 22 minutes
Not Working: A Novel
Narrated by Tuppence Middleton
Lisa OwensUnabridged — 6 hours, 22 minutes
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Overview
“Everyone's been talking about this book. . . . Charming and funny, this read is simply delightful.”-Bustle
“A deadpan comic debut for the procrastination generation.”-The Guardian
Claire Flannery has just quit her office job, hoping to take some time to discover her real passion. The problem is, she's not exactly sure how to go about finding it. Without the distractions of a regular routine, Claire confronts the best and worst parts of herself: the generous, attentive part that visits her grandmother for tea and cooks special meals for her boyfriend, Luke, and the part that she feels will never measure up and makes regrettable comments after too many glasses of wine. What emerges is a candid, moving portrait of a clear-eyed heroine trying to forge her own way, a wholly relatable character whose imperfections and uncanny observations highlight what makes us all different and yet inescapably linked.
Praise for Not Working
“Ruefully funny . . . features a kind of millennial Bridget Jones whose red wine-and-TED Talk-fueled pursuit of a higher purpose in life leads to hard truths and hangovers.”-Vogue
“In this laugh-out-loud debut, Claire Flannery is a lost soul who quits her day job to discover her true passion. In taking a hard look at her own character, Claire finds that her loveable qualities are sometimes squashed by mistakes, like the evenings she blurts inappropriate remarks after too many glasses of wine. [Lisa] Owens's story is a smart, relatable and delicious debut.”-Harper's Bazaar
*
“It's no mean feat to fashion a novel out of the stuff of everyday life. . . . Fortunately, Owens is quite a writer. . . . Not Working works because there is lots going on beneath its placid, ordinary surface. . . . With this funny, serious debut, Lisa Owens has proved that she's one to watch.”-The New Statesman
“There are sharp observations about generational change, particularly on the topic of work. . . . The novel is a light read but it raises some timely issues. . . . A secure job with a future is not that easy to find, as Claire's comic and compelling tale serves to show. This book offers a form of catharsis for anyone who has felt that they are not quite doing their job right. . . . It is soothing to find you are not the only one noodling along in your career.”-Financial Times
“Stellar . . . [Owens has an] ability to take the potentially trite problem-of-the-privileged trope and deftly craft it into readable fun.”-Publishers Weekly
“Owens offers a millennial take on the traditional British chick-lit heroine. . . . Claire is a realistically awkward character who will appeal to readers looking for a less-angsty take on the new adult trend.”-Booklist
“A novel as insightful about the contemporary dilemmas facing young professionals as it is sharp, incisive and laugh-out-loud funny.”-The Observer
“Lots of people say they laugh out loud when they read a book they love. But in the case of Not Working, I really did laugh out loud, often and raucously.”-Elisabeth Egan, author of A Window Opens
Editorial Reviews
“Ruefully funny . . . features a kind of millennial Bridget Jones whose red wine–and–TED Talk–fueled pursuit of a higher purpose in life leads to hard truths and hangovers.”—Vogue
“Everyone’s been talking about this book. . . . As Claire experiments and explores herself, [Lisa] Owens creates a fantastic journey of self-discovery. Charming and funny, this read is simply delightful.”—Bustle
“In this laugh-out-loud debut, Claire Flannery is a lost soul who quits her day job to discover her true passion. In taking a hard look at her own character, Claire finds that her loveable qualities are sometimes squashed by mistakes, like the evenings she blurts inappropriate remarks after too many glasses of wine. Owens’s story is a smart, relatable and delicious debut.”—Harper’s Bazaar
“It’s no mean feat to fashion a novel out of the stuff of everyday life. . . . Fortunately, Owens is quite a writer. . . . Not Working works because there is lots going on beneath its placid, ordinary surface. . . . With this funny, serious debut, Lisa Owens has proved that she’s one to watch.”—The New Statesman
“There are sharp observations about generational change, particularly on the topic of work. . . . The novel is a light read but it raises some timely issues. . . . A secure job with a future is not that easy to find, as Claire’s comic and compelling tale serves to show. This book offers a form of catharsis for anyone who has felt that they are not quite doing their job right. . . . It is soothing to find you are not the only one noodling along in your career.”—Financial Times
“Stellar . . . [Owens has an] ability to take the potentially trite problem-of-the-privileged trope and deftly craft it into readable fun.”—Publishers Weekly
“[A] rollicking debut novel . . . This hapless protagonist will leave younger readers laughing—and wincing—in recognition.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Owens offers a millennial take on the traditional British chick-lit heroine. . . . Claire is a realistically awkward character who will appeal to readers looking for a less-angsty take on the new adult trend.”—Booklist
“A deadpan comic debut for the procrastination generation.”—The Guardian
“A novel as insightful about the contemporary dilemmas facing young professionals as it is sharp, incisive and laugh-out-loud funny . . . such a fresh voice . . . filled with blisteringly acute observations of the mundane thoughts and obsessions that fill the lives of people with too much time on their hands.”—The Observer
“Lots of people say they laugh out loud when they read a book they love. But in the case of Not Working, I really did laugh out loud, often and raucously. Claire Flannery is quite simply the most charming lost soul I’ve ever met. If you’ve ever felt like an impostor in your own life, been driven crazy by your mother, or worried that you were out of step with your friends, Not Working is your next great read.”—Elisabeth Egan, author of A Window Opens
“Lisa Owens’s eye for life’s mundane details makes for a novel that is hilarious, sharp, and true. Not Working is simply delicious.”—Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants and The Possibilities
“Not Working is as close to the tenderness and funniness and uniqueness of real life as books get. It makes me feel like I did when I found Adrian Mole decades ago—like I know this person on the page or, in a way, am them. It’s really very rare, and very special.”—David Whitehouse, author of Mobile Library
“Not Working is absolutely brilliant, insanely funny, but also moving and true. Lisa Owens is one of those writers on whom nothing is lost.”—Nathan Filer, Costa Award–winning author of The Shock of the Fall
“I loved Lisa Owens’s Not Working, a bright, funny novel of daily life suffused with real melancholy.”—Marie Phillips, author of Gods Behaving Badly and The Table of Less Valued Knights
“Lisa Owens is a comedy genius and a serious, skillful, and beautiful writer. Not Working is so clever and original, pithy and poignant, capturing the voice of a bright, lost generation. It’s not often you find a kindred spirit in a book, but I found one here.”—Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals
“A pin-sharp, utterly addictive debut.”—Vogue (U.K.)
“Full of crackling, voice-of-a-generation observations.”—Glamour (U.K.)
“Combining the honesty of Bridget Jones with the bang-on social observation of early Sex and the City, this nails it.”—The Pool
2016-03-03
In Owens' rollicking debut novel, an indecisive millennial wallows in "voluntary unemployment," trying the patience of everyone around her. When Claire Flannery decides to leave her job in "creative communications" to find a career she's more passionate about, she first has to figure out where her passion actually lies. Her live-in boyfriend, Luke, happens to be a brain surgeon-in-training, and Claire envies his clear-cut path to success. In the meantime, all her friends have climbed London's corporate ladder, leaving Claire to wonder where she fits in her social circle. Brash but observant, Claire has a tendency to speak without thinking, which lands her in hot water with her mother. Without the emotional support of her parents, Claire begins an inevitable downward spiral, drowning her sorrows in gallons of wine, self-pity, and bad decisions. Thankfully, Owens uses quick, sharp vignettes to move us through Claire's London, so we're never asked to wallow with her main character for too long. These sketches have the added benefit of giving us snapshots of Claire's interior struggle. With trademark 20-something selfishness, Claire has the ability to turn even a toothbrush cup on the sink or a weed growing out of a foundation into a metaphor about her failed life. To her credit, Owens deploys a deft sense of humor to help us laugh at the incongruities of contemporary upper-middle-class crisis. In Owens' hands, even Claire's long-overdue visit to a dentist results in a misunderstanding that sums up the shame, absurdity, and hopefulness of the overskilled, underemployed worker. Since Claire already has Luke, Owens frees her character from the constraints of the marriage plot haunting similar rom-com titles like Bridget Jones's Diary. Rather than, "Reader, I married him," we get the sense Claire might wind up happily dating a new career, if only she can decide on one. While her privilege never quite catches up with her, this hapless protagonist will leave younger readers laughing—and wincing—in recognition.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169265729 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2016 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
Read an Excerpt
1
Wallflower
There is a man standing outside my flat wearing khaki-greens and a huge “Free Palestine” badge.
“Are you the owner?” he asks, and I turn to see if he is talking to someone else, but there is no one behind me. It buys me a second to remind myself which side of the Israel-Palestine conflict I am on.
“I think so, yes,” I say, and then with more confidence, because now I’m sure, “Yes, I’m definitely the owner.”
He scratches his neck, which is gray with dirt. His ears have the same ashy hue.
“You need to get the buddleia removed. It’s a hazard.”
“Oh right,” I say, looking up to where he is pointing, to a plaster pillar on the front of the building, topped by an ornamental detail. I’ve never noticed it before, but now I’m embarrassed to see that the paintwork is cracked and filthy. If anyone had asked me to name it—if a million pounds had been resting on it—I would have guessed it was called a balustrade. “Does it not serve a structural purpose?” I say.
He stares at me, tugging on his beard, which tapers into a slender plait.
“It’s a weed. It’s not supposed to be there,” he says, and now I understand: there is a plant sprouting from the top of the thing, a spray of purple flowers. It’s quite pretty.
“And . . . sorry, who are you?” I ask, wondering if he is from the city council, a neighbor or an interfering passerby.
“Colin Mason, MBE,” he says and offers a dusty hand.
I hesitate for a fraction of a second before good manners kick in and I take it.
“Claire,” I say.
“Shall I deal with it, then?” he asks, nodding up at the buddleia. “I’ll do a bit of a paint job while I’m up there too.”
“Mm, just . . . I’m going to have to talk to my boyfriend about it first. Because we share ownership. How can I reach you?”
“I’ll be around,” he says. “You’ll see me about.”
I go inside to wash my hand and call Luke. A woman answers, his colleague Fiona.
“He’s scrubbing up for surgery,” she says. “Can I get him to call you back?”
“Would you mind just holding the phone to him so I can have a quick word? Two seconds, I promise.”
There’s a fumbling noise and then Luke’s voice.
“What’s up?”
“There’s a problem with our flat. A buddleia needs removing.”
“A what?”
I sigh. “It’s a weed. A purple flowering weed? The guy outside said it needs to go.”
“What guy?”
“Colin Mason.”
“Who’s that?”
“He has an MBE. He was pretty adamant.”
“So what do you want to do? Do you need to call someone? Can I leave it with you? Claire,” he says, “I’ve got to go.”
“Yes, leave it with me. What do you want to do for dinner?”
“He won’t be home for dinner,” Fiona says. “He’s going to be working late.”
“Oh,” I say. I think I’ll sit tight on the buddleia thing for a while; see if it develops.
Tube
Three women opposite talk about the weather as if it’s a friend they don’t much like.
“And that’s another thing,” says one, leaning in. “My no-tights-till-October rule has gone straight out the window.”
Her companions bob their heads, uncross and recross their nylon-clad legs.
Wallflower
My mother phones me on her lunch break. I can hear she’s in a cafe.
“Where are you?” she asks, as though she’s picking up a baffling background cacophony, instead of the silence in my kitchen.
“At home.”
“I see. How’s the you-know-what going?”
She means “job hunt”: calling it the “you-know-what” is, incredibly, less annoying than the question itself.
“Yep. Fine. Just trying to push on.”
“Listen, before you go, what do you make of this? I had an awful dream last night that I saw Diane, the . . . Diane from work. It was definitely Diane, but in the dream I thought she was someone else, a stranger.”
Until now I have only heard my mother describe her as “Diane the black receptionist.” I have a feeling there is more to come.
“Funnily enough”—this is said as though it’s just occurred to her—“I did see a woman who I thought was Diane yesterday in town, and went to say hello but then realized it wasn’t her.” She laughs. “Claire, what do you think? Do you think she would have been offended?”
“Who,” I say, because I can’t resist, “Diane or the person you thought was Diane?”
“The other lady. Not Diane. Do you think she would have known that I confused her with someone else, with another—”
“Another woman of color?” I help her out.
“Oh,” my mother says, “I don’t think that’s very PC. I don’t think you can say ‘colored’ nowadays.”
Tube
A few seats down the car, there’s an old man knitting, bald and cozy in a big white woolen cardigan. I smile at him and raise my eyebrows, and when I do, I see the earrings, purple dangly ones, and realize it isn’t an old man at all but a woman, not so old, my mother’s age maybe, who has lost all her hair. She grins at me, the needles clicking away, and I keep my eyebrows up, smiling hard at my hands, which lie still in my lap.
Wake
After the main course is cleared away, the waiters—who are really just teenagers—bring out dessert: bowls of melting ice cream and fruit swimming in syrup. I’m sitting at the children’s table with the other children. (We’re all over twenty-five.) My cousin Stuart, who beneath his suit jacket is wearing a “No Fear” T-shirt, asks me what I’m doing these days.
“I’m working that out,” I say. I’ve had a lot of wine: it keeps coming and I keep drinking it. “I quit my job two weeks ago so I could take a bit of time to try to figure out why I’m here. Not in a religious way, but I believe everyone has a purpose. Like, how you were made to be in computers. That makes total, perfect sense.” I stop, worried suddenly that he’s a normal engineer and not a software engineer, but he nods.
“Marketing wasn’t your calling, then.”
“Creative communications,” I correct him.
“Won’t lie: I never really knew what that meant.”
“It . . .” I prepare to launch into an explanation, then realize I may never need to again, “doesn’t matter anymore.”
“There aren’t any spoons,” Stuart says, and I beckon one of the teenagers over.
“Could you bring us some spoons, please?” I am indignant that I should even have to ask, and my tone is pleasingly chilly. The boy waiter smirks. When he comes back, he’s clutching a bouquet of knives, which he releases in a silver cascade in front of me.
“No spoons left,” he says. “No forks either. We’re really busy today.”
I shake my head. “Unbelievable,” I mutter to Stuart as we dole out the knives. I slice off some of the shrinking ice-cream island and carefully lift it to my mouth. I look across to the table where my poor grandmother is sitting. Her husband of sixty years is only just in the ground and she’s licking a speared peach-half like a lollipop.
During coffee, Stuart’s dad, my uncle Richard, gives a speech about Gum. He pokes gentle fun at the pride Gum took in his “war wounds”—the scars from his many operations.
“He really did love to show off his war wounds,” I say to our table. My cousins nod and smile, murmuring agreement. “And more!” I continue, pointing down at my lap and laughing. “Even after the heart op.”
“Whoa,” says my cousin Faye. “What? Gum used to show you his . . . ?”
“Oh—no, no. ‘Show’ makes it sound . . . It wasn’t . . . I don’t think it was really on purpose or anything,” I say. Everyone is looking at me. No one is talking. “Honestly, it definitely wasn’t a big deal. At all. I always thought it was—Did no one else have this? How it used to just kind of slip out?”
Faye is shaking her head. Her ears, poking through her thin blond hair, have turned red. I glance around at all the other cousins’ faces; most are gazing into their coffee. I dump a packet of sugar into mine and stir it with the knife I saved from dessert.
Dream
At night driving on the motorway, my lights won’t turn on, but each passing car has theirs on full beam, dazzling between fretful stretches of darkness.
Context is everything
“The buddleia (or buddleja bush),” according to one website, “can either be a beautiful flowering garden bush attractive to butterflies or a vile, destructive, invasive weed.”
Bus
I take the bus to the gym I can’t really afford anymore. I choose a seat by the window and try to make progress with my book. (I have been reading Ulysses for nearly nine months.) When I’ve read the same paragraph five or six times, I look up, desperate for some relief from the words. An old guy in a powder-blue jacket with long, sparse hair is coming slowly down the aisle. He looks around for a seat, but they’re all taken and no one gets up, so like a stoic he sets his mouth and grips the handrail next to him. I think about offering mine, but I’d have to ask the woman next to me to move. She looks important, smartly dressed as if she’s going to a meeting. She’s reading through some notes and I don’t want to disturb her, or make her feel bad that she didn’t offer up her seat. I go back to Ulysses and, burning with the effort of pretending I haven’t noticed the old guy, I finally make it onto the next page. When the woman next to me gets off, the old man stays where he is. I watch him sway and shuffle with the movement of the bus, dancing in his orthopedic shoes.
Gym
At the gym, I try to get out of my membership contract.
“You’ll need to wait until the thirtieth of the month to hand in your notice, and then your contract will end two months after that,” the woman whose name badge says frankie tells me. It’s Halloween and she is dressed as a witch, with a hat, a cape and her nails painted black. Underneath the cape, she’s in a shiny black unitard.
“But the thirtieth is a full month away,” I say. “Can’t we just pretend it’s yesterday?”
“If only!” she says, rustling a tin of retro sweets at me sympathetically. I take a pack of butterscotches and crunch them two at a time.
She looks at her records. “I see you still haven’t had your Full-body Analysis. Shall we do that now, as you’re here?” I had been putting it off until I got fitter because I wanted to get a better score than Luke, but it’s been two years and if I’m leaving, I might as well get it done. She comes around the reception desk and ushers me to a table, taking her plastic broom with her.
In response to the questionnaire, I tell Frankie that I don’t drink any alcohol or coffee, and that I sleep for nine hours every night. My blood pressure is good and so are my resting levels, but when she tests my aerobic fitness on the treadmill, I’m so eager to impress that I nearly slide off, and my vision goes dark while I gasp for breath.
“How often did you say you come here?” Frankie asks, looking at her clipboard. “Have you thought about a personal trainer?” By the time I leave, I’ve signed up to three one-on-one sessions with a personal trainer named Gavin, at a specially reduced introductory rate of £99.99.
Success
I’m not sure if my mother has been storing up material for our conversations, or if it’s part of the process of grieving for her father, but these days when she phones, she seems to have an awful lot of awful news to relate.
“Pippa from church, in the choir—you know her. The husband, an atheist—you wouldn’t have met him. Slipped and fell in the shower: it’s touch-and-go whether he’ll walk again. I’ve sent Dad out to buy one of those rubber mats. You can’t be too careful.”
And: “Gordon two doors up from us, well, his son-in-law, the policeman—I told you, remember? Depressed. Several attempts, over the years, but they thought he was over all that. Anyway,” she says with a sigh, “it would seem this time he did succeed.”
My next move
I go to a cafe to get out of the house and bring my laptop so I can do some career research. There is a table of about eight women, all with babies, and a couple of them are breastfeeding. They’re talking about how hands-on their husbands are, and while their one-upmanship makes me slightly suspicious, I can’t deny that the women look great. Their skin is fantastic, and the babies are all so sweet—tiny, quiet and content.
I’m surfing websites for jobs, but don’t know what I’m looking for and all my searches keep returning sales or executive positions way above my earning bracket. A woman comes in who looks about my age, balancing a toddler on her hip, a little girl. The two of them are in matching Breton-striped tops and jeans, and when she orders a coffee, she actually has a French accent. She sits at the table next to me and the child is off: behind the counter, under the table, climbing up the stairs marked no entry. She is delightful; the baristas don’t mind at all.
I click on a description for a heritage job, which involves writing the blue plaques on buildings where notable figures used to live. I could definitely do that, I think, sum someone up in a couple of words. I consider how I would blue-plaque people I know: Luke = “eminent physician”; Paul = “pioneering artist”; Sarah = “educational innovator.” I have a harder time with the ones who work in PR and management consultancy, and decide that’s because they probably wouldn’t deserve a blue plaque anyway.
The toddler is at my table, holding out her arms and waving both hands from the wrists, beaming. I do the same and she laughs, runs away, buries her face in her mother’s lap saying, “Maman, Maman!” and the mother, who might in fact be younger than me, bends over to murmur a stream of French into her daughter’s bright bobbed hair.
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