Kirkus Reviews、Lit Hub等各大媒體雜誌
遴選為2024年最期待新書
每天凌晨3點55分,紐約州北部的某大賣場中,一群被稱為「Movement」的上架團隊,徹夜將當晚抵達的商品卸貨、放到貨架上,並在開店之前解散。
賣場工作固然辛苦,最大的問題在於公司分配的工時不夠,大部分的員工即使身兼多職,也只能勉強餬口。因此當店長Big Will宣布要離職時,這個上架小組發現了一個機會,只要施點計謀,他們其中一個同事就可能升上管理職位,同時拉抬所有人的工時、福利和升遷機會。
《The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.》作者Adelle Waldman將她的機智與觀察力投向社會中以基本工資度日的市井小民,描述他們在現在的經濟環境下,每天的辛苦與挑戰。透過一群大賣場的工作人員,看見平凡人苦中作樂、努力賺錢養家的動人面貌。(文/博客來外文館)
One of New York Magazine's "23 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2024" • One of VOGUE’s Best Books of the Year So Far • One of ELLE’s Best (and Most Anticipated) Fiction Books of 2024 • One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Kirkus’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024 • One of Lilith Magazine’s “21 Books We Want to Read in 2024”
From the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. comes a funny, eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America.
Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn’t schedule them for enough hours―most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies.
The members of Team Movement―including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.
Adelle Waldman’s debut novel was a breakout sensation, lauded by the Los Angeles Times as an “exacting character study” with “excellent and witty prose” and described as “incisive and very funny” by the Economist and “brilliant” by both NPR’s Fresh Air and the Washington Post. In her long-awaited follow-up, Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to the world of modern, low-wage work. A humane and darkly comic workplace caper that shines a light on the odds low-wage workers are up against in today’s economy, Help Wanted is a funny, moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.