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A review by owenwilsonbaby
The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by Olga Ravn
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
‘He tells me about the bridge and the woods near his childhood home, about the stream that flowed under the bridge, how they used to swim there, and a lot of other things from the place he calls Earth. He's shown me a stream that runs down in the valley. Obviously I can't leave the ship, but he's pointed it out to me from the panorama room. The stream glitters, and it runs like a silvery thought through the landscape. He put his hand on my shoulder. It was warm. A human hand. He said: 'You've lots to learn, my boy.’ An odd thing to say, seeing as how I was made a man from the start.’
I can’t lie, I was almost in tears at the end of this novel. I don’t want to be reductive about a refined and original piece of writing, but the best way I could describe it to my sister without spoilers was like an expanded version of that ‘cells within cells’ scene in Bladerunner 2049, based on Nabokov’s Pale Fire. It has so much to say about people being exploited by capitalism, to the very end, and demonstrates this by stripping characters of names, instead turning their individual narrative passages into witness statements. As such, it might be difficult for some readers to piece together plot and character threads, but I feel like once you adjust to the book’s narrative style, you get swept up in it regardless. There are so many lines of beautiful prose about humanity and the qualities and meanings of being alive, of community, connection, memory, experience and survival. It sort of feels like a novel that is inherently about climate change without ever mentioning that overtly? Or at least collective responses to it. There were so many images in this that made me want to cry. I really loved it.
I can’t lie, I was almost in tears at the end of this novel. I don’t want to be reductive about a refined and original piece of writing, but the best way I could describe it to my sister without spoilers was like an expanded version of that ‘cells within cells’ scene in Bladerunner 2049, based on Nabokov’s Pale Fire. It has so much to say about people being exploited by capitalism, to the very end, and demonstrates this by stripping characters of names, instead turning their individual narrative passages into witness statements. As such, it might be difficult for some readers to piece together plot and character threads, but I feel like once you adjust to the book’s narrative style, you get swept up in it regardless. There are so many lines of beautiful prose about humanity and the qualities and meanings of being alive, of community, connection, memory, experience and survival. It sort of feels like a novel that is inherently about climate change without ever mentioning that overtly? Or at least collective responses to it. There were so many images in this that made me want to cry. I really loved it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Grief, and Murder