Genre: Coming
of Age
Description:
“ONE DAY, YOU’RE A VALUED EMPLOYEE OF THE COMPANY … THE NEXT DAY,
YOU’RE BEING PUSHED OUT THE DOOR.
What happens when your secure corporate job suddenly becomes
precarious? Book editor Sarah Morris finds herself in this predicament when the
company she has served for twenty-one years is reorganized. Sarah’s boss gives
all the company’s book editing projects to freelancers and a pet employee,
unofficially demoting Sarah, who must spend her days tagging documents. And
when Sarah’s boss starts bullying her, she realizes that she’s been pigeonholed
into a dead-end job.”
Author:
“Kathleen Jones was born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada and graduated
from the University of Toronto with a degree in English literature. For thirty
years, she toughed it out in the corporate world, chiefly as an editor for
various Canadian book publishers. Sometimes, Kathleen had the opportunity to do
work that she enjoyed, but too often, she didn’t. Towards the end of her
career, the type of work that interested and challenged Kathleen began to slip
away, and she became less and less happy.
Then one day, Kathleen realized something: creative, out-of-the box
thinkers like her don’t belong in the corporate world, and if she wanted
“meaningful” work, she would have to create it for herself.
That was when Kathleen decided to pursue the only work that she’d ever
really wanted to do since she was a child: the work of a novelist!
Today, Kathleen is a full-time author who writes for a number of
popular book blogs. She also contributes monthly book reviews to Goodreads. She
lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.”
For more, visit her website her website.
Appraisal:
I struggled to even decide what genre to indicate this book fit in.
The small publisher that published this book describes themselves as
specializing in non-fiction genres “such as memoir, autobiographical fiction,
poetry, or a combination.” While I’ve never heard the term autobiographical
fiction before and it seems like two words that contradict each other, what
they mean by that is easy enough to figure out and based on the author’s
biography this novel almost surely has some degree of that. But what I could be
sure of is that while far from what we think of or the typical definition of a
coming-of-age story, that description still seems to fit this one as the
protagonist struggles with life’s changes and how to deal with them in the same
way as a teen trying to move into adulthood might.
However, unlike a coming-of-age story, the ideal reader for this is
probably a touch older. To really get into the story of Sarah Morris, I think a
reader needs to be old enough to be somewhat established in their career,
possibly seen and struggled with unanticipated changes, or at least observed
others deal with that struggle. Those in this position will understand where
Sarah is coming from and get sucked into the story, wondering how it is going
to end.
Buy now
from: Amazon US Amazon UK
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant issues
Rating: ****
Four Stars
Reviewed
by: BigAl
Approximate word count: 75-80,000 words
1 comment:
It's also an interesting way to illustrate how labour is treated these days. Here in Britain the deskilling going on is pitiful. The polarisation of labour (and remuneration, and job satisfaction) is just awful.
Sounds like a chilling read.
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