It's a woman thing, right?

When life gets me down, everything is upside down and nothing is going how I planned it to, I am more than a little guilty of simply rolling over and taking the blow instead of getting back up and soldiering on.

I frequently find myself in an all too familiar routine of retreating to a steamy bubble bath with a glass of wine in one hand, the bottle in the other and a book of the 'chic flick' variety (featuring a woman protagonist whose issues seem worse than my own) tucked under my chin.

My go to is almost always the infamous Bridget Jones' Diary and to date I have never actually came across a worthy contender. It was when pondering over this fact that I set about trying to find just that.

Taking to the internet, I stumbled across multiple possibilities before deciding upon the newest and currently trending Not Working; a fitting title or myself who, at the time of purchase, was seeking refuge from unwanted unemployment which meant countless application rejections but hey.. plenty of free reading and comfort eating time!

In an ideal world..

Twenty-something year old Claire Flannery becomes voluntarily unemployed after she leaves her job in 'creative communications' (the description of which is something I'm still unsure about despite her best efforts to summarize multiple times throughout the book).

I'm sure most of us would agree that not having a job is a daunting prospect to the likes of today's average person, regardless of the often overwhelming temptation to say "fuck it" and walk out the door. Claire, however, plans to live on her sayings with support from her partner and, get this, trainee BRAIN SURGEON, Luke in a bid to find herself leading her, in turn, to a more desirable career path.

Sounds like she has it all worked out.

There's only one minor problem- she has absolutely no clue what she wants to do with her life or what she's even passionate about, not even a little. To worsen matters, she feels overshadowed by Luke's success coupled with constantly looking up on her London friends as they ascend the corporate ladder.

On top of this, the journey to career enlightenment intertwines with an altercation that takes place between her and her Mother due to Claire thinking without speaking. It turns out though that they may be more alike than they realize as her Mother is no stranger to inappropriate one-liners in public places and she likes to push the boundaries of what classes as racism when doing so.

Does anyone really care about the origins of the Buddleia?

Owen's uses metaphorical humor throughout the story in an attempt to portray Claire's ever-growing list of city related annoyances as they mimic her failing life. Some of which include: a toothbrush cup aside the sink, awkward coffee shop encounters, an overdue dentist appointment which becomes yet another unemployment reminder and the infamous buddleia which, to you or me, is basically a weed growing through a foundation on the outside of their apartment.

Mentioned once, this may have been a witty and tasteful comparison to Claire's life and a funny one nonetheless. However, the buddleia made an appearance one to many times for my liking and it grew tedious.

She fixates on this weed, obsessing over whether or not it's a problem and should be removed or if they should leave it be. She even goes as far as to write about it's history in a job application! I'll let you guys guess how successful that was.

We all know a Claire.

In a novel such as Not Working I think it is important to create a likeable protagonist and quite frankly, the harder I tried (and I really did try) to warm to Claire, the more I disliked her. There, I said it.

She is self-absorbed with no respect for anyone besides maybe her Father who is present for a short period of time but was, to me, the most genuine and caring of the three. I found myself cringing at Claire's attitude problem especially when it came to Luke.

I mean, let's be honest, he may be a little laid back when it came to Marriage, kids, etc but the guy has the patience of a saint, he works long hours saving lives and seems to love her no matter what which is surprising when she wanders around all day merely procrastinating and worrying over weeds.

Give me a Luke any day!

I also could not get my head around why she couldn't look for another job while staying at her other one. She's one of these stereotypical middle-upper class people who think the world owes them a favor for nothing.

Is it harsh to say I thought she was a complete idiot? Because I really did.

On second thoughts..

I don't actually think that Bridget Jones is a fair comparison to Not Working for a few reasons. I feel both books entail not only a different sense of humor entirely, but rather contrasting content too.

Bridget and Claire are completely different in nearly all aspects of their personality. For example- although Claire's weight is mentioned a few times, she is not obsessed about it, nor does she worry over outfits and appearance too much. Her problems aren't nearly as funny or embarrassing as Bridget's and they revolve around her family, career and partner (who cares for her a great deal) as opposed to chasing men.

Owen's writing style in the book does not give a diary-like feel as there aren't diary entries per-say, more like short emails-to-self or thoughts. Some of them are a mere few words long but don't hold emphasizing value which seemed a waste of page space in my opinion.

I felt this structure was yet another reason I couldn't really connect with Claire and the whole thing felt rather chaotic and a bit rushed. I often found myself wondering what was going on.

Buy, borrow or bin?

Bin. Sometimes the truth makes you feel bad, but I want to be honest with you guys.

Overall I really did not enjoy Not Working. Maybe I'd set my expectations too high, or perhaps I went in expecting something completely different.

I just truly believe that Owen's could have done more with the idea and created something great from a relate-able plot line. The potential was there but the execution was not which was such a shame.

I could appreciate some of the wry humor however for me it was not laugh out loud.

GoodReads First Read

Written almost like a diary, more like stream of consciousness. I liked the style, made it a little easier to relate to the narrator. She is almost 30 something and lost with what she wants to do with her life so takes the big leap to quit her job. At first it is her discovering that she isn't the great and awesome person she thought she was. That she took a lot of things for granted. Some parts made me giggle some parts made me want to slap her upside her head.

It got better, it really did. The relationships between Claire and Luke and her father were so amazing they pretty much saved the book from 2 star rating. Not the best, but not the worst either.

Claire quits her job because it is not what she wanted to do with her life and luckily has a brilliant brain surgeon boyfriend to foot the bills. As she tries to find herself, her life spirals a bit out of her control and she has to hit rock bottom before she realises that she needs to actually make choices in order to make her life how she wants it.

Why was this so all over the place? I expected a whole story with a plot but it felt like several mini stories packed together

Whew, what a journey it has been, this book!
It was written in the stars, the moment in which this book came to me.

‘The frustrated millennial narrator quits her job because there must be more to life than marketing novelty vodka. The trouble is, she’s not sure what. Maybe she shouldn't have walked out of her job with no idea what to do next. Maybe she should think before she speaks -- and maybe then her mother would start returning her calls. Maybe she should be spending more time going to art galleries, or reading up on current affairs, and less time in her pyjamas, entering competitions on the internet. Then again, maybe the perfect solution to life's problems only arises when you stop looking for it . . .”

I read this synopsis when I was two weeks away from my last day at my office.
I knew this was not a coincidence.
I knew that Buzzfeed's millennial burnout article has gone viral recently, and websites are compiling book lists to optimise the trend.
I knew all of this because just like Claire Flannery, I was into marketing or creative communications, or what does it matter, I may never need to explain it now.

The thing is, even after finding eerie similarities, I decided not to read the book immediately, ignoring all signs of it being a cautionary tale for me.
I knew the decision I had taken, and what I needed to do, what I needed to try, and what I needed to accept, before admitting failure. I knew I would probably be making the same mistakes, I knew that I would be able to laugh at them, but later, not now.

I allowed myself a chance at my own journey of soul-searching, even though I always knew my period of rest isn’t about finding my great purpose - it is 2019 and that phrase has already become a cliche. Probably, it was less so in 2016, when this book came out.

So, 6 months in ‘voluntary unemployment’, as our dear protagonist calls it, having been through a lot of breakthroughs and breakdowns, I decided that the time was right for us, me and the book.

I read it in a day, morning to night.

It was liking reading Bridget Jones, but with fear of disappointing everyone and being stuck in an unsatisfying job instead of the fear of dying alone.

It felt good to be represented as someone who started the first job on an impulse to pay the bills and live the life and ended up staying there way too long. (I felt relieved knowing that I didn’t stay as long as Claire did).
It felt good, knowing that I wasn’t alone or weirdly wired in my struggles with job applications and not being able to muster the energy to simply do it.
It felt good, knowing about hoarding, and how the piles simply represent various emotions we are avoiding or have blocked - sadness, defeat, confusion or sometimes even ambition or hope.
It felt good, knowing that I’m not alone in resenting peers for doing well.
It felt good, knowing that an overwhelmed, over-expecting, and probably overly delusional person feels the same kind of apathy towards daily news and current affairs as I do, despite wanting to keep up with them.

It felt good, reading through daily observations of an idle mind.
Those off-plot ramblings were probably my favorite parts. Might pick up a book of essays by the author, if she decides to write them, just to read more of those.

But amidst all these cleverly written observations and situations that hit home with their relatability accuracy, I found myself waiting for something that never came - Claire’s real issues.

We brush upon vague issues of child abuse, and the 'under-the-rug' coping technique adopted by the family is also way too real. It doesn’t make for a satisfying read as there isn’t enough drama, trauma, blaming or crying around that one incident, but it really shows how these matters are often dealt with in real life.

We brush upon issues with her mother, which don’t go deep. It’s a typical trope of a critical mother and a self-doubting daughter. Also, I would have loved to see some sibling equation too, but it was more or less compensated with comparisons to cousins, so I’m going to let that go.

Soon everything is about Claire’s feelings of insecurity around her boyfriend, and her friends moving into commitments sooner than she is, and becomes less and less about work and status and identity.

We briefly see it being discussed in a conversation with her friend, where Claire mentions that the job she wants has a corner window office and fancy food is available and all that jazz, to which her friend replies, "I think I see where you went wrong. All those vague, title-less jobs have already been taken by characters in New York-based romcoms."

This, I felt was the best lesson I could derive from this book.

Things that really disappointed me:
1. Where is the social media anxiety, the FOMO?
If I REALLY cut it some slack, the book came out in early 2016, back when Instagram still had its old logo, and Instagram stories had not been invented yet. Yeah, seems unimaginable now right? Given that it has become the major FOMO and anxiety causing source amongst its users by giving them the idea that their friends are having a better time, it would have played a really strong plot device in the book. But, even without the stories, social media was going pretty strong in 2016. To eliminate it entirely and have the character physically interact with all of her friends all of the time, seemed a bit more romcom-ish than an actual believable story of a person going through a crisis. THEY WOULDN’T LEAVE THE HOUSE, DAMMIT!

2. Where are confrontations, relationship issues?

The boyfriend character is way too ideal, way too understanding. Hard to believe he was real. Didn’t lash out once.

3. Give me more details of despair and emptiness.

The toughest scenarios of self-doubt and regret over choices, the nights, are skimmed through, with brief mentions of going down internet search spirals.

4. WHERE IS BINGE-WATCHING?????????
I refuse to believe that any person, in this day and age, wouldn’t watch tons of TV if left home alone with zero obligations and responsibilities. I needed a manic episode of realising the audacious amount of lost time watching 10 seasons of total crap, one episode after another. Netflix, streaming, even cable TV watching, was missing and I could not digest it.

In the end I’d just say this:

It felt good, reading through daily observations of an idle mind.
Those off-plot ramblings were probably my favorite parts. Might pick up a book of essays by the author, if she decides to write them, just to read more of those.

Second half really saved the book. A overall solid read :)