The New Me

This book circles the everyday of a couple of American women who are at different ends of one point: their workplace. While it's fiction, it may as well be described as not; I could spot traces in this modern-day Western semi-horror book in my own life, where work has been concerned, and also friendship, for the latter where people have been more of a vague touchpoint rather than friends.

Butler's book veers into family as a safe haven from the rocky earthquake that is work. Her main protagonist, Millie, goes back and forth without much other than work as her beacon. That, frankly, can be said for the most of us who must work to live, at least without starving.

I walk home in the dark, in the snow. My tights sagging. A hole in the side of my shoe. I open my dark apartment and turn on all the lights, like there might be someone who needs to use a room I’m not in. Like I’m expecting company. Like I still share my life. I light a cigarette and open my laptop. I turn on an episode of Forensic Files, my favorite of the serialized murder documentaries, to comfort myself. There’s someone in the house! I wish.

I know that Forensic Files is propaganda for the Justice Department, like all of these crime shows are, and that they instill a weird deference to authority and a childish fear of the other, and that TV in general messes with your perception of time and influences your desires and gives you unattainable expectations for life, but I still can’t make it through the night without it.

Butler's fly-on-the-wall approach to report of what goes on in Millie's world is one of the author's fortés:

I hear one of the designers talking to a client on the phone, trying to schedule something. There’s a lot of bold laughter, loud friendly sentences. She is presenting herself as a mixture of accommodating (“Well, that’s completely up to you, Linda”) and urgent (“Let’s not wait too much longer on the Emery order, shipping takes forever”). I anticipate a dramatic sigh, possibly a “Jesus Christ,” when she hangs up.

We all board after passing the overweight, depressed-looking Charon in the hallway, who continuously shouts, “Have your IDs ready!” She screams it at me, while holding my cracked phone and checking my e-ticket.

This book reveals much of a western person's thoughts, as molded by popular media and misconstructs on how to live The Perfect Life, and that's partly why I liked it and loathed its inhabitants; the author's sense of written style is affable and only a little challenging, which—also—is why I really like and dislike this book; I suppose that this is, also, why it's both more challenging and interesting than what a written version of the tv-series "Girls" could be like.

This book circles the everyday of a couple of American women who are at different ends of one point: their workplace. While it's fiction, it may as well be described as not; I could spot traces in this modern-day Western semi-horror book in my own life, where work has been concerned, and also friendship, for the latter where people have been more of a vague touchpoint rather than friends.

Butler's book veers into family as a safe haven from the rocky earthquake that is work. Her main protagonist, Millie, goes back and forth without much other than work as her beacon. That, frankly, can be said for the most of us who must work to live, at least without starving.

I walk home in the dark, in the snow. My tights sagging. A hole in the side of my shoe. I open my dark apartment and turn on all the lights, like there might be someone who needs to use a room I’m not in. Like I’m expecting company. Like I still share my life. I light a cigarette and open my laptop. I turn on an episode of Forensic Files, my favorite of the serialized murder documentaries, to comfort myself. There’s someone in the house! I wish.

I know that Forensic Files is propaganda for the Justice Department, like all of these crime shows are, and that they instill a weird deference to authority and a childish fear of the other, and that TV in general messes with your perception of time and influences your desires and gives you unattainable expectations for life, but I still can’t make it through the night without it.

Butler's fly-on-the-wall approach to report of what goes on in Millie's world is one of the author's fortés:

I hear one of the designers talking to a client on the phone, trying to schedule something. There’s a lot of bold laughter, loud friendly sentences. She is presenting herself as a mixture of accommodating (“Well, that’s completely up to you, Linda”) and urgent (“Let’s not wait too much longer on the Emery order, shipping takes forever”). I anticipate a dramatic sigh, possibly a “Jesus Christ,” when she hangs up.

We all board after passing the overweight, depressed-looking Charon in the hallway, who continuously shouts, “Have your IDs ready!” She screams it at me, while holding my cracked phone and checking my e-ticket.

This book reveals much of a western person's thoughts, as molded by popular media and misconstructs on how to live The Perfect Life, and that's partly why I liked it and loathed its inhabitants; the author's sense of written style is affable and only a little challenging, which—also—is why I really like and dislike this book; I suppose that this is, also, why it's both more challenging and interesting than what a written version of the tv-series "Girls" could be like.

This book circles the everyday of a couple of American women who are at different ends of one point: their workplace. While it's fiction, it may as well be described as not; I could spot traces in this modern-day Western semi-horror book in my own life, where work has been concerned, and also friendship, for the latter where people have been more of a vague touchpoint rather than friends.

Butler's book veers into family as a safe haven from the rocky earthquake that is work. Her main protagonist, Millie, goes back and forth without much other than work as her beacon. That, frankly, can be said for the most of us who must work to live, at least without starving.

I walk home in the dark, in the snow. My tights sagging. A hole in the side of my shoe. I open my dark apartment and turn on all the lights, like there might be someone who needs to use a room I’m not in. Like I’m expecting company. Like I still share my life. I light a cigarette and open my laptop. I turn on an episode of Forensic Files, my favorite of the serialized murder documentaries, to comfort myself. There’s someone in the house! I wish.

I know that Forensic Files is propaganda for the Justice Department, like all of these crime shows are, and that they instill a weird deference to authority and a childish fear of the other, and that TV in general messes with your perception of time and influences your desires and gives you unattainable expectations for life, but I still can’t make it through the night without it.

Butler's fly-on-the-wall approach to report of what goes on in Millie's world is one of the author's fortés:

I hear one of the designers talking to a client on the phone, trying to schedule something. There’s a lot of bold laughter, loud friendly sentences. She is presenting herself as a mixture of accommodating (“Well, that’s completely up to you, Linda”) and urgent (“Let’s not wait too much longer on the Emery order, shipping takes forever”). I anticipate a dramatic sigh, possibly a “Jesus Christ,” when she hangs up.

We all board after passing the overweight, depressed-looking Charon in the hallway, who continuously shouts, “Have your IDs ready!” She screams it at me, while holding my cracked phone and checking my e-ticket.

This book reveals much of a western person's thoughts, as molded by popular media and misconstructs on how to live The Perfect Life, and that's partly why I liked it and loathed its inhabitants; the author's sense of written style is affable and only a little challenging, which—also—is why I really like and dislike this book; I suppose that this is, also, why it's both more challenging and interesting than what a written version of the tv-series "Girls" could be like.