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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now drives her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

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A thriller and a satire about women at work: The Night Visitor & The Beautiful Bureaucrat

16/1/2018

6 Comments

 
I like fiction that shows the characters at work, but it can be difficult to pull off convincingly. While approaching it from very different angles – British writer Lucy Atkins in a thriller about a highflying TV presenter and historian; American Helen Phillips in a satire about a data entry clerk – both have produced extremely satisfying reads.

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The Night Visitor by Lucy Atkins

At the launch party for her bestselling biography of one of the first female surgeons, Professor Olivia Sweetman is all smiles. A beautiful family, supportive friends and a successful career as both academic and TV personality, she seems to be living the dream. But she’s just discovered her marriage is a shambles, and her career is set to unravel if the truth gets out about the dodgy evidence on which the new book is based. For the moment, the only person who knows what she’s done is her informal research assistant, Vivian Tester, the socially awkward housekeeper of a Sussex manor house who found the Victorian diary on which her book is based. Although grateful for her invaluable contribution to the book, Olivia hasn’t enjoyed working with Vivian, and has looked forward to parting company at the project’s end. But Vivian has other ambitions and, with secrets shared and concealed from each other, the mutual bond is deeper than Olivia could imagine.
 
Switching between Vivian’s first person account and Olivia’s in the third person, the novel backtracks to the women’s first meeting through to the shocking climax at the manor house on the day after the launch. Positioned as a thriller in the domestic noir style, I actually found the pace a little slow in the middle, but I enjoyed it immensely approaching the end as Vivian emerges from the stereotype of lonely eccentric with odd compulsions (which is of course how Olivia sees her) to a complex character with an understandable grievance. It is she who experiences the “night visitor” in the form of a terrifying visual hallucination accompanied by sleep paralysis. Although we eventually discover the genesis of this disturbing experience, I found it a bit gimmicky and didn’t feel it served the more psychological aspects of the plot particularly well. On the other hand, I loved learning about dung beetles (especially as, having only ever seen them in Africa – twice – I had no idea they were so prevalent and important in the UK). Overall, I found it an easy and entertaining read addressing socially relevant topical issues such as celebrity, narcissism, female academics, hubris, self-deception and the nature of truth. Like
The Life to Come, it’s a warning to all of us not to underestimate people who, on the surface, may seem colourless. Thanks to Quercus Books for my review copy. Although about friendship rather than work relationship, I was reminded of Her by Harriet Lane.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips

On the day Josephine finally gets a job after over a year unemployed, she and her husband are evicted from their apartment. Although the room they find to rent is shabby and grim, the couple are optimistic: they’re young and in love and living in the city. Soon, they hope, they’ll have a child. But Josephine’s job, alone in a shabby room with no windows, among several corridors of similar anonymous rooms whose occupants she rarely sees, checking names on a Database is dreadfully dispiriting. She doesn’t know the purpose of the organisation she works for – although there’s a clue it might be quite sinister – and her petty attempts to improve her work environment – such as sticking a calendar on the wall and going outside to eat her lunch – are not allowed.
 
But at least she can go home, eyes bloodshot from staring at the computer, to her loving husband. Until he fails to return from his own similarly ill-defined job, or respond to her increasingly frantic messages and texts. Then the next evening he’s back, with an unconvincing explanation of having to work. He seems different, more aggressive in his lovemaking; is their relationship going to the dogs?
 
Helen Phillips’ is a painfully poignant satire on alienation, poverty and the hypercapitalist culture that treats people like machines. I found it reminiscent of
The Room, one of my favourite reads of 2016, and a psychoanalytic research carried out in the early days of computing addressing the stresses on data entry clerks performing a tedious repetitive task that nevertheless required a high level of accuracy. So sad that civilisation has failed to move on from that. But maybe it’s inevitable when life is an anagram of file. Thanks to Pushkin press for my review copy.

Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
6 Comments
Charli Mills
17/1/2018 09:04:14 pm

An interesting curiosity to have about viewing characters in the workplace. It can be difficult to pull off -- either the work has to be believable, or there needs be a plausible reason for a character to not be engaged in work. The Beautiful Bureaucrat sounds all too real. It makes me wonder if part of your commitment to ensure that you write fiction as much as the other needs of writing is to make sure your job as an author remains creative and not a series of repetitive tasks. I know my own enthusiasm wanes if not creative. Two thoughtful reviews!

Reply
Annecdotist
19/1/2018 10:27:02 am

Yes, indeed, Charli, creativity matters and it can be extremely painful to be stuck in a job where it’s thwarted. While every job has its mundane elements, I’m lucky that I haven’t spent so much of my working life in repetitive tasks. But I do remember how angry I felt doing one very short-term factory job.
Work has featured in both of my published novels but without being the main event. However, my WIP takes place in one viewpoint character’s workplace that happens to be another’s “home”. I find I’m treading a fine line between portraying it accurately but in an interesting and entertaining way.

Reply
Norah Colvin link
22/1/2018 12:06:30 pm

I do find the covers of both these books quite interesting. I'm a little curious about dung beetles, the night visitor and the rest of the story. Intriguing.
Work did play some part in both of your published novels, but it was not a major focus - more so for Diana, perhaps. I can see it could be more of a focus in your third, still unnamed?, novel, and find it interesting that you consider it a fine line between accuracy and entertainment. I look forward to the results of your tightrope practice.
Josephine's job reminded me a little of my most recent paid role as research assistant. It's now done, thankfully.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/1/2018 01:39:10 pm

Maybe it’s time for an educational article on dung beetles, Norah? Surely it must love them with the combination of creepy crawlies and shit!
Oh dear, your recent job sounds something of a disappointment. Although it gives me another way of connecting these two novels as Vivian was an extremely proficient research assistant in The Night Visitor!
Thanks for picking up on the workplace scenes in my novels – although I went all around the houses trying to find what I’d said about it to reply. (It was quite weird, as I had a distinct memory of mentioning it, but not seeing it in the post I thought I’d either imagined it or it was in an entirely different post.) So thanks for reading the comments and replies and extending the discussion, as you’re so good at doing.
Right now, going through another edit my WIP (trying to get it down to 100,000 words but also reluctant to let it go) I’m very conscious of it going to split readership, some of whom might think I’ve oversimplified the workplace issue, others who might find it difficult to follow. Well, I’ll soon find out!

Reply
Norah Colvin link
26/1/2018 10:45:25 am

An article on dung beetles - that would be fun and fascinating. Actually one of Rebecca Johnson's Insect Series is about Dung Beetles. (I interviewed Rebecca a couple of times on readilearn.) Her sister, who I worked with, and she took the photos of the beetles for the book. I can't remember the whole story now, but it was hilarious.
It is hard to let those ever-so-clever words go, isn't it? It's not fair. We come up with the perfect phrase and then realise it serves no purpose other than to give us pleasure - then we decide it has to go. Sad.
How exciting that it's nearly time to engage readers with your WIP: your third novel! Woohoo!

Annecdotist
26/1/2018 04:43:35 pm

I’m glad someone has written a dung beetle story for children, then surely you could plan a whole lesson – or day of lessons – around the topic.
I don’t think any of my words are so clever I can’t bear to cut them, and there’s a lot of satisfaction in seeing the word count reduce when it needs to. I’m quite excited this afternoon as my second edit has got Matilda down to the 100,000 word point and Mr A is currently proofreading in for me. No, it’s letting the whole thing got that feels quite hard though I’m sure when a couple of people have read it and find there’s actually a lot more work I can do it.




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