The Beautiful Bureaucrat

June 1, 2015
Phillips's (And Yet They Were Happy) novel incisively depicts the corporate hell in which young drones toil in faceless buildings, sorting meaningless files according to inscrutable policies. Josephine Anne Newbury takes a data-entry job and finds she can't quite leave her work at the office; her husband and friends suddenly seem less real than Room 9997, where Josephine compiles a mysterious and massive database that seems to dictate reality itself, while warding off Trishiffany, her workplace "frenemyâ from the so-called Department of Processing Errors. Discovering that she can't quitâthe rules don't allow itâand realizing that she never caught her direct superior's name, Josephine wonders if she's losing her mind, fears she's somehow pregnant by data, then becomes convinced of her husband's imminent demise because a file contains the date of his death. In fact, things are much worse than Josephine suspects. When even the smallest act requires allocation to the appropriate department and red tape dictates the limits of love, the life of a bureaucrat proves to be full of danger. Phillips's black comedy of white-collar life doesn't reinvent the meaning of the word Kafkaesque, and to its credit, it doesn't try. The novel has enough horror and mordant humor to carry the reader effortlessly through its punchy send-up of entry-level institutionalization.

Starred review from June 1, 2015
In a novel that's part love story, part urban thriller, Phillips (And Yet They Were Happy, 2011, etc.) captures the way an isolating job and an indifferent city can stealthily steal our lives and erode our souls-and the protective, nourishing power of love. A nameless, genderless, nearly faceless boss with rank breath; a tiny office in a vast windowless building, its "pinkish ill-colored" walls fluorescently lit, marked with "scratches, smears, shadowy fingerprints, the echoes of hands" of bureaucrats past, and impervious to efforts at beautification; the incessant, maddening drone of typing; the red-eyed co-workers of uncertain trustworthiness; the computer database into which numbers on pages in piles of files must be entered and double-checked and processed just so-these are the things Josephine Anne Newbury encounters in the administrative job she accepts, asking few questions and getting fewer answers, for a mysterious organization. Having up and moved to the city from the "hinterland" looking for new opportunities, Josephine and her beloved husband, Joseph, endure mindless work following a long period of unemployment and the added alienation of living in unwelcoming apartments, surrounded by other people's belongings. They find solace, joy, and vitality in each other, in the linguistic playfulness that has become their own language, in the warm glow of simple meals enjoyed together by candlelight, and in their shared dream of starting a family. But the city to which they have moved "in hope of hope" sweeps them into its sinister clutches and brings them face to face with pressing existential questions to which the answers may be as inevitable and unpleasant as they are unclear. Phillips takes situations and sentiments that will be all too familiar to many readers-a soul-crushingly dull job that callously steals our youth and beauty, the desperate yearning to be free of it, the restoring power of love and food and intimacy and of shared language and laughter-and uses them to explore bigger universal themes of life and death and the choices and compromises they demand. Intense and enigmatic, tense and tender, this novel offers no easy answers-its deeper meanings may mystify-but it grabs you up, propels you along, and leaves you gasping, grasping, and ready to read it again.

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June 1, 2015

Phillips's debut (after the collection And Yet They Were Happy) tells of a seemingly meaningless clerical job in a faceless building in a big city that is gradually revealed to have consequences worthy of a Twilight Zone episode. Josephine is relieved finally to get a data-entry position after many months of unemployment, even though her nameless boss has rotten breath, her miniscule, windowless office has suspicious smudges on the walls, and the other employees appear to be nonexistent. The days she spends entering numbers onto endless forms are a stable counterpoint to the peripatetic living situation she shares with her husband, Joseph. Evicted from one sublet after another, the couple is sustained by love, sharing frugal candlelit meals on the floor. Gradually, Joseph's sudden late-night absences combined with the tedium and isolation of Josephine's job cause her to look under the surface of mundane events and discover the shocking mechanism that lies beneath. VERDICT Suspenseful, creepy, and distinct, this work is sparse in style but elaborate in wordplay. For readers who like their literary fiction with a side of sf. [See Prepub Alert, 2/23/15.]--Joy Humphrey, Pepperdine Univ. Law Lib., Malibu, CA

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2015
Josephine moves to the city with her husband in hopes of finding a job, but a hostile market makes it hard to find work even in a bustling metropolis. Finally, on the day they are evicted from their apartment, she lands a successful interview. Her new position, entering numbers into The Database from a tiny, windowless office, isn't ideal, but it does come with a regular paycheck and the promise of a more secure future. It's not long, though, before the job begins to gnaw at her, and it's not just the bleary eyes and tedium engendered by the work. Her husband also seems a little off, failing to come home some nights and offering only cryptic explanations. As Josephine probes deeper, she uncovers an unnerving truth and realizes that if she doesn't take action, she could lose all she holds dear. Phillips' first novel is peculiar, mysterious, and intriguing, bringing to mind the visceral symbolism of Margaret Atwood's dystopian works. Clever wordplay toys with readers while hinting at a deeper commentary on the meaning of life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)