A beautifully written story about the grief of infertility and miscarriage.

I can’t remember what made me pick this book, but I saw it somewhere (Goodreads, Instagram) and thought I should try it. I got it from the library awhile ago but just got to it this weekend. It was… interesting. It reminded me of a Max Barry book - realistic, but slightly surreal. Also a healthy mix of Welcome to Night Vale thrown in. It was an interesting read, but I don’t know what to do with the ending. I wish more emotion had been in the story, too. It was interesting to read and think about, but overall it left me feeling a little down and apathetic. I couldn’t relate to or even understand the characters so it fell flat instead of being powerful.

Clearly I did not get it

This book is difficult to define, and its easier for me to think of the people who wouldn't like it than to identify a reader who would enjoy it as much as I did. It's a creepy little book and I want more from this author.

Read a longer review I wrote for the library: http://carnegiestout.blogspot.com/2015/09/staff-review-beautiful-bureaucrat-by.html

3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. I think I went into this book expecting the whole thing to be more sinister. In a lot of ways it IS sinister: it's the story of a woman who does a job she doesn't understand and that she suspects has a net negative impact on the world. But the whole evil-is-a-boring-bureaucrat thing isn't, I think, the moral message this book leaves you with in the end.

That's not why I'm dinging it, though. I'm dinging it because when the action heats up, it gets weird in ways that, while they're aesthetically interesting, don't really seem to serve the story as it has been told up until that point. I like weird books, but in this case, the weirdness just felt unnecessary and tacked on.

"The cruel noise of keys, shoving, twisting, was she at the wrong door in the wrong building on the wrong street in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong city in the wrong state in the wrong country on the wrong planet."


Having finished this book, I can confidently tell you that I cannot enlighten you as to the answers of any of those questions. But, for approximately 174 of 177 pages, I had a pretty great time wondering and turned pages at the rapid pace of the quoted passage above. However, as I reached the very end: the taunting sound of pages, flipping, tearing*, was I at the right ending of the right plot in the right story with the right characters in the right setting in the right novel in the right cover in the right jacket.


I'm being facetious, of course, but what I mean to say is that as I finished the book, I was no longer entirely certain of what I was/had been reading, and I'm still not quite sure if I mean that in a good way or a bad way. This book balances in a narrow strip of dry grass between a factory of fabulism and an alleyway of ash can realism,** and maintains an engaging balance pretty well throughout, but did not quite stick the landing for me in the very end. I suspect the novel's genre-bending/blending qualities and somewhat unresolved ending may frustrate some readers and possibly frustrated me, but I remain content that I read it, and there is much to recommend it. And you may enjoy the book if any of the following resonate with you:


Having the worst data entry job ever
Having the worst filing job ever
And you wear a saggy cardigan, tights, and sensible shoes daily and also the office environment makes you break out
Having the worst boss ever, who has perpetually foul breath and also possibly no face
Having journeyed from something one might describe as a "hinterland" to try to stake your claim in something the hinterland folk might refer to as "the big city"
Living in a neighborhood that may be an Actual Futuristic Dystopia or perhaps just a shitty part of ungentrified Brooklyn on a bad day
Living in a succession of horrible sublet basement apartments that have other people's stuff in them and instead of getting better and better, just get horrible in different ways each time
Suffering the fallout of some sort of major economic collapse that may be some unprecedented new degree of collapse we can only imagine or may just be the average level of collapse we are experiencing or have already experienced
Eating spaghetti daily, with butter if you're lucky. The boiling spaghetti smell is the best possible smell you could ever hope to encounter in any of your horrible apartments.


All these things are basically real things that are in this book. These are the ash can school/Bildungsroman aspects of the novel, which are the parts I enjoyed most and you may too. Now imagine, if you will, that layered atop this more traditional plot, you have some eerie, disorienting, subtle dissonance that is akin to that dreadful ringing hum emitted by bad fluorescent lighting. These are the little clues and suggestions the author interweaves throughout the book that constantly leave you guessing: Brooklyn or Dystopian Future? Boss With No Face or Boss With Indeterminate Features? Noise of Many Typewriters Clacking or Noise of Countless Cockroaches Scurrying? Warehouse or...????


Phillips does a great job of stringing the reader along, and I think she finally takes a position in the end...I think...but I still do not know. This book could have easily been a 4 if I'd felt a bit more at peace with the ending, but overall the read was satisfying and I was left feeling certain that Philips is a writer to watch.

*No actual library books were torn or otherwise harmed in the reading of this novel or writing of this review

**I can't take credit for this imagery; it's an allusion to a scene in the book

This was fun and freaky until it ended up just being a book about pregnancy. I mean, there was a female narrator, so I guess I should have figured. Eye roll. Boo hiss.

у сірому-сірому місті є сіра-сіра будівля. там нема вікон, майже відсутній телефонний зв'язок, ліфти спиняються лише на непарних поверхах, а працівники виглядають абсолютно середньо – от тільки шкіра їхня суха і хвора, а очі червоні від розірваних капілярів. головна героїня, джозефіна, влаштовується туди працювати і скоро стає саме така: від постійної роботи з документами в сірих папках і паперових порізів у неї хворіють руки, від вдивляння в незрозумілі – а працедавець наполягає на тому, щоб вона не намагалася в них розбиратися, – записи втомлюються очі та псується зір; утім, ця ситуація все одно краща, ніж попередні 19 місяців безробіття, коли джозефіна і її чоловік не мали певності, що з ними буде наступного дня.
похмура атмосфера і гротескна бюрократія роману в деяких читачів викликають враження антиутопії – але воно хибне, це зовсім інший жанр. можливо, гелен філліпс написала ідеальний сліпстрім, де реальне й нереальне переплетені так тісно, що відчуття дивного не відпускає читачів навіть у найбуденніших описах.