Not Working

March 28, 2016
Owens’s stellar debut novel, composed of vignettes, concerns recently unemployed 20-something Londoner Claire Flannery, who has quit her communications job in an attempt to find her purpose. Claire has the luxury to do this thanks to some savings and her patient boyfriend, Luke, a brain surgeon in training with whom Claire owns a home. As her unemployment begins to stretch over several months, Claire finds herself plagued with doubts, such as her jealousy at Luke’s flirtatious colleague Fiona and her wilting at people’s disapproving attitudes toward her hiatus. Finding herself in stasis after a few half-attempts at job searching, Claire drinks too much at times and plunges into petulant states in which she starts arguments fueled by her insecurities. Owens’s protagonist may not always be likable, but this makes her all the more relatable. The author summons an ugly truth in the way Claire’s self-doubts test loved ones and turn otherwise fine situations unpleasant. Though the novel resolves in an inevitable way, this doesn’t detract from Owens’s ability to take the potentially trite problem-of-the-privileged trope and deftly craft it into readable fun.