Genre: Humor/Satire
Description:
“One day the postal services will turn a buck by using drones to
deliver fake Rolexes to citizen slackers on a universal income. But for now,
the mail team continues busting arse delivering gym membership promotions to
retirement villages. Adopting an attitude of resignation offers comfort to
some, but one worker, inspired by Ned Ludd, Marx, and the Unabomber, opts for
sabotage. Both comic and absurd, Smoko is a social realist novel set in the
depths of New Zealand suburbia.”
Author:
“F.E. Beyer writes about dead-end jobs, travel, history and crime. He
is the author of two books: Buenos Aires Triad, a tale of low-end
criminals in Argentina's capital, and Smoko, a comic novel set in New
Zealand. His articles and reviews have appeared in the South China Morning
Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Inside Indonesia, and Travelogues Magazine.”
Appraisal:
This explores what it is like for a postal worker at the postal
service in New Zealand. I assume this is not really how it is there, but an
imagined situation sometime in the near future. The postal service has been
privatized with lots of emphasis on productivity from the workers and making a
good profit for the company. This is likely to ring true for anyone working for
a large corporation anywhere in the world. It will keep you laughing because,
as satire does, it goes a bit over the top, but it will also get you thinking
and pondering where the line that shouldn’t be crossed (but maybe will be some
places) should be.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
FYI:
Some adult language.
Since the story mostly takes place in New Zealand there is lots of
slang and expressions that fit the location. Plenty of words I’ve seen before
and understood and lots more I don’t think I’ve read or heard, but felt like I
understood what was being said from the context in the more difficult
instances. Even the title, Smoko, refers to what I’d call slang, the
Smoko Room (break or smoke room) that workers gather in when taking a break.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues.
Rating: ****
Four Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate word count: 45-50,000 words
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