This Could Hurt

August 1, 2017

Popular novelist Medoff (e.g., I Couldn't Love You More) has long worked in management consulting, so she's on firm ground with this novel about five tumbled-about human resources colleagues. Among them: Rosa, the enduring HR chief of Ellery Consumer Research Group; her devoted right-hand man Leo; associate director Rob, ever more dependent on "work wife" Lucy; and Kenny, who's feeling pressure from home to get on with the big promotions. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

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October 15, 2017
Intrigue swirls around HR executive Rosa Guerrero in this engrossing workplace drama by Medoff (I Couldn't Love You More, 2012, etc.). Ellery Consumer Research Group is one of "a glut of boutique research firms...fighting for market share" in the wake of the economic meltdown. The HR department has already shrunk from 22 to 16 to 13 as the story begins in November 2009, and the CEO is pressuring Rosa to cut more. She's just had to fire her trusted right-hand man for embezzling, leaving her at age 64 without an obvious choice to groom for succession. Longtime training and recruiting director Rob Hirsch is blatantly burned-out, while hotshot Wharton MBA Kenny Verville is too busy looking for a better job at a bigger company to pay much attention to his current work. Rounding out the cast of principals are Communications/Policy VP Lucy Bender, gunning for a promotion, and Employee Benefits manager Leo Smalls, Rosa's principal confidant. These two cover for their boss after she has a minor stroke and, once back at work, her memory and behavior continue to deteriorate. Although Medoff frankly chronicles plenty of scheming and self-serving, Rosa's devotion to her staff is repaid with loyalty and affection that are all the more poignant coming from believably flawed characters. People get second chances here: Kenny buckles down at Ellery after blowing an outside prospect, and Rob finds that getting laid off is the kick in the pants he needs to revitalize himself. At the center stands Rosa, a tough corporate infighter who is also a mother hen; she's the most vivid figure, but everyone gets nicely textured treatment in an engrossing narrative that manages to encompass Lucy's therapy issues, Rob's devotion to his family, Leo's search for Mr. Right, and Kenny's troubled marriage while maintaining the main focus on their lives at work. An economical epilogue makes clever use of corporate organization charts to quickly trace the characters' odysseys after the story's bittersweet conclusion in August 2010. A sharp-eyed novel of corporate manners.

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October 30, 2017
Medoff (I Couldn’t Love You More) explores the effects of the 2008 economic downturn on a small staff of human resources managers at a research firm in this witty novel. At the twilight of a successful career, 64-year-old Rosa Guerrero, Ellery Consumer Research’s widowed HR chief, is losing her edge. She experienced a ministroke some years earlier and now has had a second; at work, she’s endured a major lieutenant’s embezzlement and company cutbacks. Rosa is tough but secretly a mother hen, so it’s sweet (but never saccharine, because of Medoff’s wry and ironic sensibility) when her most trusted staffers nurture and cover for her to keep her at the job that is her whole life. At least one of the four underlings whose stories are told along with Rosa’s has ulterior motives, but all will recognize their weaknesses and become more fulfilled by the end. The characters are well-drawn, though the author gets stuck in their personal tangents, which occasionally drags down the storytelling. Nevertheless, this is a sharp and moving novel.

December 1, 2017
Medoff (I Couldn't Love You More, 2012) takes on corporate dilemmas in her newest incisive novel. Following the economic downturn of 2008, the organization chart for the human-resources department of Ellery Consumer Research Group looks pretty tight. Rosalita Guerrero runs an efficient ship, as befits her decades in the business. Peter, Lucy, Leo, Rob, and Kenny take care of everything from operations to training, and it's a congenial, if not always supercharged, team. But as the recession worsens, Ellery demands cutbacks, and one by one Rosa's staff is either fired or catapulted into work overload. They need her guidance now more than ever, but Rosa suffers a debilitating stroke, inspiring the team to come together in a genuine life-or-death project. All the petty drama of office life is on display: who has Rosa's ear, who's out to stab someone in the back. Medoff's scenarios will be familiar to everyone employed everywhere, no matter the company size, and she cogently captures the angst and celebrates the camaraderie of coworkers committed to group success while struggling with personal demons.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)