Welcome to another book of the month on the very last day of the month! The book of this month is Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman. It’s a book about a group of employees working at a retail store in a small and declining town in upstate New York. The novel focuses on members of the Movement team, who resume at 3:55am every morning to unload trucks, stock shelves, and deal with an odd, self-conceited boss. Through the course of telling this story, we meet a cast of characters: from the ex-convict seeking redemption to the girl who’s holding on to the faded glory of being a “cool kid” in high school to the older lady who’s literally too old for this mess, among others. When a rare opportunity for a promotion presents itself, this divergent group of people must work together to engineer an outcome for their own goal(s). They do this through surmounting personal hurdles, navigate cliché and irritating corporate structures, and the frustration of low-wage work.
Right off the bat, this is a set up for a great story. All it needs is an author that can carefully wield the ingredients and come up with a piece de resistance. And yes, Waldman does just that. Her biggest strength is her ability to present a mirror to our society. I often say that the true mark of any society is how it treats its most marginalized. A sociological endeavor, this book presents the grueling circumstances under which the poorest among us work. It reminds us how greedy corporations can be, extracting the most from their workers with no consideration for their welfare. But Adelle Waldman doesn’t use any of these terms. Instead, she shows us the single mom who must balance decreasing hours with fending for her daughter and unemployed boyfriend. We see a struggling mom who has [an undiagnosed] reading problem and who needs to take time to go see her son in prison but was first denied that. We see a former convict struggling to get redemption from a society who chooses to punish him over and over again. We see a former runaway who is determined to make something of herself no matter the circumstance. We see a struggling single dad finally make some overtime pay but spend the entire thing on hospital bills when he gets sick. And therefore, couldn’t throw a birthday gathering for his child. We see them do this on an hourly wage, no health insurance, and no opportunity for growth.
A good writer is not pedantic; doesn’t tell us what to think or how to think. Instead, a good writer trusts us. Adelle Waldman does just that. She trusts us to carefully examine our society in its reflection, which she's so carefully constructed. I loved the exploration of the ordinary. I loved the different characters. I loved the dialogue.
There is a lot of depiction of this novel as funny, comical etc. I didn’t see that. I guess, like Jeremy Armstrong with Succession, I didn't get the joke. What’s funny about inhumane capitalism? What’s funny about hopelessness in a dying town? What’s funny about survival? What’s funny about addiction? What’s funny about poverty? What’s funny about low-wage workers clamoring for more hours doing manual labor just so they can make ends meet? What's funny about the economic decline of a once booming town? Were there moments that had me chuckle a little? Sure. But (and I say this as a sucker for lough out loud funny books) I would not describe this as a funny book. The other slight thing about this book was that same cast of characters: I lost track of them. About three stand out (really, all the women stand out). But the background story of the men?? I couldn’t keep up. And everyone had a background story. It felt exhausting knowing who was Milo, Raymond, Diego (Ok, I think I nailed Travis). I also struggled with point of view (POV) a little, as it jumped around paragraph to paragraph (sometimes line to line), and this head hopping made it a little jarring.
All of these aside, I enjoyed this book a lot. And I'm sure you will to.
Ah, September is already over. Who can believe it?
Happy Fall, friends!
Love,
I
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