#netgalley

The Warehouse 

by Rob Hart

Blake Crouch told me to read this book.

Ok, not personally, but still. 

Initially, I read the first chapter, shrugged and put it down, slightly discouraged by the glossy magazine-sheen styled tone.

Then I received a BookBub email with Blake Crouch’s recommendation to read The Warehouse.

Having just acknowledged in my last B3 post that I might in fact jump off a bridge if the man suggested, I figured it was reasonable to read his book recommendation instead.

Naturally, I finished The Warehouse within a couple days because as the narrators and perspectives switched so did the tone of the book, making it as palatable as a CloudBurger at LivePlay. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Enter a world where The Cloud is king. Naturally, said world has gone to pot: climate change makes temperatures unendurable, unemployment is ubiquitous, water unpotable, meat scarce, and prospects dire for small business.  But at The Cloud, with fully stocked shelves of shiny goods, air-conditioned dorm rooms, built-in healthcare and tram cars, not to mention LivePlay entertainment and readily available Cloud Burgers, life is good. Well, not necessarily good, but tolerable. Well, not necessarily tolerable, but air-conditioned. 

So what if the shifts are 12 hours long, or there’s a $6 bank transfer charge, or you get docked ratings for not volunteering for extra work time? And so what if the bathrooms are constantly out of order, or the cinderblock rooms are the size of closets or your every move is tracked with a wristband?

The Warehouse is like if The Circle were written about Amazon and Apple combined featuring Steve Jobs and Lisbeth Salander set to an employee training video.

But don’t you enjoy having everything delivered at the click of a button? And for a such a reasonable cost? Have you ever wondered after you click “buy now” who is paying for the deficit? 

*B3 received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

Once I had turned the final page of The Whisper Network, I revisited how the book was categorized. How was this page-turning whodunnit and what was actually done catalogued? Was this a thriller? A piece of literary fiction? A crime novel? Adult fiction? What I found it under was “Women’s Fiction.” 

Hm.  Then I wondered, is there a “Men’s Fiction” section?

When I started reading the book, I didn’t know what I was getting into, ostensibly a high-functioning office politics drama. But The Whisper Network is delightfully decadent and also so literary that I found myself highlighting passages because they rang so true. This has become more of a rarity in my experience of crime-type dramas and so-called “women’s fiction.” Books of this ilk tend to sacrifice savvy for salaciousness and three-dimensional characters for two-sided arguments. This book does neither. It creates a complex tapestry of the inner workings of a corporation, particularly the legal department - an apt department indeed, considering sexual harassment becomes the topic of debate. Where better to hash it out than amongst the best legal council possible? 

And yet, this plot makes the arguments regarding sexual harassment and power in the workplace that much more nuanced. Because if a list were to surface - say, a list of individuals to avoid in your career - would you take it an a gift and sidestep? Or would you see it as an offense against said individuals’ possibly very reputable characters? 

And I simply could not put it down. I couldn’t wait to see what happened to our varied heroines as they navigated the muddy waters of their careers. Because in those moments, they were us - waffling, debating, discerning, hashing, taking action, failing, and regretting, - plotting, researching, networking, investigating, reflecting, discovering, raging and triumphing. And so the craftiest bit of the novel is this - a device I cannot recall having seen - or, read. The book shifts regularly to first person plural. 

What? the Literary geek in you exclaims. 

Yes, “we” are included for whole chapters. And with each “we” it’s possible I’ve been manipulated into reading on and on, or it’s possible “we” includes me in the war so I don’t feel so alone in my own. But in the end, we don’t care one way or another, because just like in life, we don’t feel like there’s anywhere to go but forward.

*B3 received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Nothing to See Here

by Kevin Wilson

Kevin Wilson has done it again. You may remember Kevin Wilson from his darkly comedic Royal Tennenbaums-eque take on the hapless performance art family in The Family Fang. Or perhaps from his alternatively optimistic commune of utopian ideals in A Perfect Little World. 

While similar in tenor, imbued with Wilson’s quixotic hopefulness and unexpected chaos, Nothing to See Here is wholly unique in premise and scope.   

Lillian, a smart girl from the wrong side of the tracks, fights her way into a privileged prep school where she and her rich roommate, Madison, bond during their first year. Then an infuriating circumstance (which I won’t spoil here) leads to a split. Fast-forward ten years later when Madison, now married to a senator, summons Lillian for an urgent, yet mysterious, job opportunity.  Lillian, still stuck in a dead-end life, jumps at the chance and quickly finds herself dousing the flames of the senator’s twin offspring. 

Literally. 

Because they self-immolate when they get agitated. 

Wilson writes in such a way that I simultaneously want to ask him to be my friend and tell him to get out of my head. His commentary sometimes made me laugh out loud in doctors’ office waiting rooms. He describes a spoiled little boy removing toys from a chest: “like clowns from a VW bug, out came so many stuffed animals that I felt like I’d dropped acid.”  And on feeling out of place: “I felt like some mermaid who had suddenly grown legs and was now living among the humans.” He expertly describes “bread that cracked open like a geode” that makes me crave a loaf immediately.  And then he subversively sneaks in plenty of touching real-life wisdom about things like life, parenthood and meditation: “And I had never thought about it this way, had always assumed that whatever was inside me that made me toxic could not be diluted, but each subsequent breath made me a little more calm.”

Wilson’s is the type of voice we need more of in the world: unfailingly witty, unexpectedly original and always, and perhaps most importantly, relentlessly hopeful, even when it seems like the world is burning down around us. 

*Netgalley provided B3 with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Release Date: November 5, 2019

The Answers by Catherine Lacey

Have you had a chronic illness? Indeterminate symptoms that ebb and flow confounding doctors and holistic practitioners alike? Ever prostrate yourself on the floor of an abandoned warehouse to experience Reiki as explained by a recently ordained eight-year old?  

No?

Just me?

Junia - or er, Mary, is ill. She lumbers through NY, more a compilation of symptoms than a person, and possibly not even sure she is one anymore. After countless attempts at remedy which leave her sanity and bank account eviscerated, she is referred to a PAKing Practitioner - PAKing being a unique combination of Touch/ Energy/ Zero Balancing/ Reiki / Meditation Treatment which miraculously assuages her discomfort. And, as with most magical alternative cures, it is prohibitively expensive.

In order to scrounge up enough cash to get by, Mary answers a mysterious Craigslist Ad to be a high paid  - well, she is not sure what exactly, - but through a series of rigorous interviews, she becomes part of a well-compensated experiment: a “Girlfriend Experiment” for the megalomaniac tortured star of the era, who is convinced that romantic relationships are thwarting his creativity. So, he creates an experiment breaking down the facets of Girlfrienddom and a team of experts casts a woman in each role, my favorite of which is “Mundanity Girlfriend,” whose directives include sharing the space with the star but not exactly acknowledging him: “stare absently out a window in a daze for up to three minutes at a time,” “look in his direction, but not in his eyes…smile, slightly, as if you are thinking about something else.” There is of course “Intimacy Girlfriend,” “Anger Girlfriend,” “Maternal Girlfriend,” and as Mary discovers, “Emotional Girlfriend.”

If the quirky absurdity of the premise doesn’t reel you in, the writing will. Lacey’s prose reads like poetry: utterly human, intimately clandestine and pathetically humorous. The content harkens to Dave Egger’s The Circle and Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project, and the insightful narrator calls to mind Alexandra Kleeman’s You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine and Miranda July’s The First Bad Man.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t admit I was slightly disappointed at the end of the novel. But whether I just didn’t want it to end or I was searching for answers that it wouldn’t give me, I’m not entirely sure. I highlighted dozens of passages in the book and just this moment sent them to a friend to appreciate. The writing is so deep that it seems to resonate at a cellular level. And I wonder if that’s all we all are - an assemblage of random molecules in space, unsure systems negotiating a precarious balance, a collection of cells, congregating in the curvature of a large question mark rather than a definitive period.

*I received a galley via NetGalley for an honest review.