I am very honest with my reading lists, and no matter how FOMO I am - answer: a lot - there are specific genres I am usually avoiding, unless are recommended by people of high literary taste. Hence, I ended up spending some time with a Gothic novel of workplace inspiration: Service a debut by Lauren Mooney.
To be fully honest, the workplace part weighted the balance in favor of this book. I am my own employer for ever and used with the duress, but from my memories of working in an office, no matter how fancy it looked and was described, the horror genre comes very close.
Danielle, the main character of Service is in her 30s, broke, hating her job and just broke up with her boyfriend. This may lead to a romantic entanglement, or to some journey of discovering herself or who knows what other positive thinking magic. Danielle of Service though is invited by her glamorous boss, Jeannie, to spend some time in the noble mannor in England.
But the next step isn´t a kind of countryiside romance or not even an entrepreneurship plan, but a couple of interactions and there is Jeannie, who seems to literally own her. The workplace drama continues, but with a moderate taste of horror. An old mannor will stay an old mannor, after all.
The whole story is a chain of unexpected situations, some explained in a humoresque vein, some just creepy, some both. There are expectations and laugh and mystery too.
There is a certain theatrality of both the setting of the book and the dialogues, which may be because the author herself is a dramaturg as well.
I´ve read the book over the last torrid weekend and it was the most inspired literary choice in a while. It is a debut novel to remember, and hopefully it will not take too long until Mooney will be back with a new novel. The waiting will be worth it, anyway.
Rating: 5 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
No comments:
Post a Comment