by Beatriz Serrano, translated by Mara Faye Lethem
Read by Emer Kenny
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Content: There is some swearing, including a few f-bombs, talk of sex, and drug use. It’s in the Adult Fiction section of the bookstore.

On the surface, Marisa appears to have the ideal life: a good home, a good job, and a sexy neighbor to hook up with. But, her job is a soulless one: she’s a middle manager at an ad agency. And, especially in the year after the death of her closest co-worker, Marisa is finding it harder and harder to stomach going to work. Things come to a head at a company-sponsored weekend retreat, where Marisa – as the token office feminist – is asked to give a presentation to the company about “what it means to be creative”, something which she is not sure she is anymore.

I usually try to stay away from books that everyone at work has read, but this one (plot notwithstanding) sounded fascinating. And honestly, it’s a good book. I’ve taken to calling it an anti-capitalist manifesto (and not written by an American!) – it’s a treatise about all the ways in which work, the thing that enables living, is soul-crushing, and how life would be so much better if we chose to work at things that we wanted to do instead of having to work in order to pay for the things we want to do.

It’s the characters that drive the book as well. I loved Marisa, and her snide comments and observations about work life, and her quiet desperation to not have to go shut herself up in an office doing unimportant work for 9 hours a day. I also adored the narrator; Kenny was brilliant at capturing Marisa’s sardonic voice.

And oh, the ending. It’s a riot.

Highly recommended.