Review by New York Times Review
I'VE COME TO BELIEVE one can take the sentimental temperature of a cultural moment by looking at its novels' heroines. There's something earnest about disillusionment by way of sex and heartbreak, and likewise something comforting when girls overcome obstacles (grief, illness, addiction) and emerge into wiser womanly selves. Those stories carry a certain air of having been written pre-2016 election, as if they rode the last wave of pop-feminist optimism into the abyss. Taken now, these narratives have aged into cuteness. There's nothing cute, however, about the newest breed of misanthropic, gloriously self-destructive, essentially alienated young female protagonists, exemplified by two new releases, Halle Butler's "The New Me" and Jen Beagin's "Vacuum in the Dark." Following the paradigm established by writers like Ottessa Moshfegh and Catherine Lacey, these latest heroines bespeak a literary era that's swung past genial pessimism into repulsion. The tone of these novels is a rebellion cut through with apathy. With echoes of Melville's laconic Bartleby, they'd "prefer not to." Not to sign up for yoga, go to brunch, meditate. These women refuse to make themselves better. In "The New Me," Millie, the self-hating, rage-filled narrator (whose rants would make Dostoyevsky's Underground Man beam), surveys the scope of society's strivings and finds them not just lacking, but proof of life's meaninglessness. The tonal spectrum of this novel is narrow, but deep, running from desperate optimism to despair and back again, all set in the gory mundanity of an office. She's a temp worker, living a temporary life that has the quicksand feeling of purgatory. It's tempting to write Millie off (as her only friend, Sarah, does) as another privileged millennial, but she is too self-aware to be dismissed. Mulling over the transition to permanent employee, she internalizes the therapized self-talk her cadaverous coworkers use to make meaning: "The meaninglessness of it all washes over me again, another intoxicating wave, the floor opening beneath me.... I was playing this idiot's game of racking up things I was doing that I didn't want to do in service of some imaginary thing I might one day stumble upon." Millie is Sisyphus and her boulder is shredding documents. She's also in the process of trading her own last shreds of authenticity for the things she's been promised will cure her of her rage and allow her - finally - to connect with others: "I could have friends if I had more money. I could be easier to get along with if I had more stability.... I could be who I wanted to be - calm, cool, self-assured, self-reliant, independent enough to attract people who could enjoy my company because we're all independent people doing what we have to do to get by.... Not like who I am now, flailing, filled with puke, thinking about death and feeling angry all the time." Millie's fantasy of getting a "real job" succeeds in making her entire life more real for a moment. But the gap between her "hallucination of the perfect future" and her lackluster present will close, and brutally. It's not that Millie's delusional; her dejection is depressingly realistic. Butler provides breaks from Millie's point of view that reveal her distrust of others is justified. Her co-workers don't like her. He exboyfriend didn't like her. She offends nearly everyone. She smells. So does her apartment. Walking in the park, she is mistaken by onlookers as both drunk and mentally ill. And yet, there's a nobility in Millie's inability to fake it. Another worthy addition is Beagin's "Vacuum in the Dark," a sequel to her much-lauded debut, "Pretend I'm Dead." We're back with Mona, a cleaning lady who talks to Terry Gross in her head and has boundary issues with the charismatic clients who fascinate her. This novel is a joy: truly laugh-out-loud funny, while staying grounded and dignified, even as Mona capsizes again and again. She's a young woman haunted by the ghosts of rape, abuse, incest, abandonment and addiction. Set on finding people to help bury her pain, she inevitably attracts more of it. As the novel opens, Mona is cleaning poop - human feces, left like tributes around the house. Beagin thus metaphorizes Mona as a receptacle for the garbage left by irresponsible people around her: her mother, who left her for pet parrots; a blind therapist, who tells Mona she smells of suicide; a Hungarian painter and opiate addict who persuades her to pose naked; and "Dark," a married man who twists Mona's insides with a lust that leaves no prisoners. Mona takes it all, carries it, cleans it. Yet as she rids herself of each leeching narcissist, only to fall under the spell of the next, the novel traces a burgeoning sense of self-awareness. Maybe she's an artist? Maybe she's stronger than people think? Remembering that she administered a morphine overdose to her perverted, cancer-ridden grandfather, she says she doesn't feel shame about it, only "relief" - she finally identifies it as a necessary revolt: "The only shame I feel is that I've been too passive. I haven't said no to enough in my life. If I had, I'd probably be a different person now. Less tormented, maybe. More ... successful." There are several mentions of the "Odyssey" throughout "Vacuum," and as Mona wades in and out of the houses and neuroses of her clients and family, there's an inevitable homecoming. Mona is long past expecting home to be healing, but that's nonetheless where the tender pathos of the novel lands. Butler also takes Millie back home to her clueless, middlebrow parents' house. The parents in both of these novels are perhaps more lost than their progeny, despite being satisfied and secure in real estate, book clubs, ice cream in front of the television. If they ever questioned the numbing consumerism that dictates their aspirations, they are deaf to it now. They are in a sense what's led to this moment of emptiness, and do not hold the keys to the exit. What does it mean in 2019 to be an intelligent, sensitive woman in a spiritually depleted, social-media-curated facsimile of a world? Take the opening from "Vacuum in the Dark": It means that what you hope is soap in the soap dish is instead literal crap. There's nothing cute about the newest breed of misanthropic, self-destructive, alienated young femeile protagonists. STEPHANIE danler is the author of "Sweetbitt t
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 23, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
Thirty-year-old Millie just can't seem to move on with her life. Every day she works at the same fruitless temp job and returns home to her empty apartment, fixating on all the little ways she could turn her life around. Then she watches TV until she falls asleep, only to restart the cycle once again. Sarah is Millie's only constant friend, and even though they talk often and do things together, Millie finds herself more annoyed with her than not. When Millie misconstrues an email from the temp agency, the dream of a full-time position finally seems within reach. But when it falls through and the temp agency refuses to place her again, Millie scrambles for work and realizes just how empty that vision has become. Butler (Jillian, 2015), named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a Granta Best Young American Novelist, is a master of satire. Her darkly hilarious novel vividly captures contemporary American life and will keep readers addicted to the end.--Emily Park Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Butler's incisive latest (following Jillian) opens in winter in Chicago, where 30-year-old Millie is sweating inside her coat as she rides the crowded train to her temp position at the Lisa Hopper interior design showroom, where the uptight senior receptionist Karen calls her Maddie, and she gets paid $12 an hour to clip together mailers and answer the phone. Millie's life is deeply stagnant-besides her temp position, she has one awful friend named Sarah, little to no social life, and a deep dependency on the crime show Forensic Files, which she watches nightly. It's clear to Millie that something must change. When she receives an innocuous email from her temp agency, Millie mistakes it for an impending job offer, and throws herself into revamping her life. In short chapters, readers are treated to insights into the lives of the other women at Lisa Hopper, especially Karen, who has different plans for Millie's future than what Millie is expecting. Though Millie's mundane and self-destructive despondence sometimes feels all too familiar, Butler has nonetheless created an disquieting heroine with an indelible voice. Butler is a sharp and observant writer, who takes to task the tragicomedy of modern capitalism. Agent: Claudia Ballard, WME Entertainment. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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