I think this was recommended on the Political Gabfest podcast. Story about people working in an HR department, worrying about internal office politics and handling redundancies etc.. Reminded me of Then We Came to the End.

Notes I made when reading it:

• This book is surprisingly readable, considering so much of it is just about working in an office
• Good description of Rob, who's been in the job 11 years and isn't great at it, but can coast a bit, finding lots of displacement activities rather than actually doing any work (10 minutes playing game on phone; reading gawker; making coffee; hitting men's room; whatever it took to avoid his work. Today his plan was to Google-stalk his ex-best friend and send him an email..
• The people Rob was closest to - his wife, his daughters, Lucy - he loved deeply, but they were women and thus shared few of his interests. In truth, they overwhelmed him with their moods. Why must they always feel so much, so often?
• Quote about Rob after he's made redundant:
  "How do you feel?"
  "Totally and completely discouraged, like I'll never find another job"
  "Rob, you just left. Two months is nothing. In this economy, it takes thirteen months on average to find a job. For most people it's like sixteen." Having made up this statistic, Leo wasn't sure if thirteen months sounded too short or too long; he just wanted Rob to relax.
  "I know, I know. But it's so demoralizing. You know what frustrates me most? I was finally getting ahead - not rich or well off, but able to put a little money away. I didn't feel clenched all the time. Then BAM! The bottom drops out. Now my life feels amorphous - there's no centre, no framework to hold it together. Every morning i get up to face a long stretch of empty hours that I have to fill. But with what? Leo, it's a mess. I'm a mess."
  It was unfair. It was scary. But Leo didn't know what else to say except "you'll find something I have faith in you." Robs situation sounded so different, so distant from his own. Leo knew he was tempting fate to think this - the bottom could drop out for him, too - but it felt like there was a vast gulf between being employed and not. At the moment, he was standing on one side; Rob on the other
  Their food came, but Rob picked at his sandwich. "I don't get it. I went to a good college, I got a job. Maybe I'm not the most ambitious guy, but I showed up every day. I lived modestly, no fancy vacations or expensive cars. But none of this matters; it's like the past twenty years were a complete waste, and I'm starting over from square one"
• Good descriptions of Rosa's increasing paranoia and uncertainty after her stroke. Struggling to find words, suspicious of what people are doing to her, imagining smells in her apartment:
  She didn't want to tell nando about the smell, but once Leo brought it up, Nando wouldn't let it go. "Could be a problem in the air conditioning" nando, the know-it-all, has said. "When did you last have the ducts cleaned?"
  "Ducks?"
  "Ducts."
  "What a strange word. Are you sure that's right?" Rosa had picked up the phone
  Nando got suspicious "who are you calling, Rosalita?"
  Rosa loved her little brother, but bitchiness was in his nature, and that's all she had to say on*that* subject, now and forever. "I'm calling my friend Lucy. She knows words."

I really enjoyed it. Sort of was expecting it to have more of a moral or message or main character but the attention was evenly spread over the different characters and followed each of their lives without seeming to try and draw overall theme from all of them

Completed : 07-Apr-2018