a very playful, strange, absurdly interesting read about the nature of work in our gloriously awful late-stage capitalist world. A lot of workplace language is expertly extracted and placed into the context of "after-work" life and the lines are incredibly blurred between work and life, work consumes our character's life.
This quote I especially love:
"Perhaps it's a matter of qualifications, the way they both certify and prohibit, the way I find the fullness of my life constantly halved, constantly qualified. Could I someday be qualified for happiness, for steadiness?" 142
Strange that I read this during my own perilous search for long-term employment...many scenes felt overwhelmingly close to my current situation....striking me a bit too hard (in a good way).
I did struggle a bit with the underlying mythology guiding some of the book (The First Temporaries and all...), I didn't really understand what was going on in those sections, and I'm not sure it added too much to the overall story.
One theme I most enjoyed in this book was work created purely by undoing/doing tasks (the undoing creates tasks to do and vice versa). Leichter seems to point out how devoid of meaning some labor is and how some jobs purely exist to create other jobs for people to do. I felt like the nature of modern-day work was really cracked open and I was staring at it from an angle I hadn't thought to look from before. I also appreciated the undercurrents of consequence - our character only seems to bristle against the evils produced by her actions when all the degrees of separation are taken away and she is forced to see exactly what/who her jobs are exactly hurting. I loved this take and think it is all the more relevant.
This book was difficult for me to keep steadily invested in - it's one of those books I think you either ingest in one go or you slowly savor it over weeks and weeks (which is what I did). The plot isn't one that you desperately want to know what happens in the end, but rather you feel a gentle curiosity and closeness to our main character, reading each section to laugh and tear up and feel understood.