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Personal Days

by Ed Park

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3011988,229 (3.12)8
Ever wondered what your boss does all day?Or if there is a higher - perhaps an existential - significance to Microsoft Word malfunctions? This astonishing debut is a scathingly funny look at a group of office workers who have no idea what the unnamed corporation they work for actually does.When it looks like the company may be taken over, fear of redundancy unleashes a deliciously Kafkaesque plot full of the tedium and mistrust of corporate life and the backstabbing bitchiness of our survival-of-the-fittest instincts. We meet Pru, the ex-grad student-turned-spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety follows him into his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jonah, the secret striver who must pick his allegiance. Assailed from all sides, Park's idiosyncratic cast of characters battle paranoia, boredom and the complexities of the lunch break as each struggles to figure out who among them is trying to bring the company down - and why. Rich with Orwellian doublespeak, filled with sabotage and romance and capturing the relentless monotony and paranoia of office life with uncanny precision, Personal Days is a novel for anyone who's ever worked in an office and wondered, 'Where does the time go? Where does life go? And whose banana is in the fridge?'… (more)
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» See also 8 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 19 (next | show all)
Couldn't finish it

I really wanted to like this book, but I could not even finish the last chapter. I understand that the run on sentences were intentional but I personally could not get through it.

The plot itself was mundane and not mind-grabbing enough for my liking. I feel like this book could've had potential but honestly it was just all over the place. ( )
  aubriebythepage | Jul 7, 2023 |
Good try. Doomed to be overshadowed by Ferris' Then We Came to the End, a similar tale of cubicle-and-layoff angst also told in the first person plural that got there a year earlier and adds up to more. Park's novel has more details and more jokes, but even thinner character development. Having worked at an internet ad agency during the economic crunch from 2000-2002 and seen the surreal half-empty workspaces and abandoned floors and disappearing co-workers that Park dramatizes I understand his point about the flatness and inauthenticity of that worklife--but that doesn't mean he couldn't create characters that are genuinely distinguishable and interesting. ( )
  AlexThurman | Dec 26, 2021 |
Richard Ellmann in his seminal biography, illustrates how Joyce would perambulate, gleaning phrases and word salads from the hum of the city. Consigning such to scraps of paper in his pocket which he would then masterfully weave into the epic which was Ulysses. The first three quarters of Personal days reveal Ed Park simply aligning the scraps into perforated guide to office life.

I was prepared to hate this book. It was simply stat padding on my yearly totals.

The final quarter of the novel is a reaping, a summoning of poetry from the boredom of the modern workplace. The dross of half-truths is burned away and the reader remains all the richer .

I can still only offer three stars, though a fourth beckons wordlessly offstage. ( )
  jonfaith | Feb 22, 2019 |
Mordant, intermittently funny office-life yarn about the put-upon employees of a failing NYC company, from Believer co-founder and Brooklynite Park. The author deftly conjures the petty humiliations and essential absurdity of corporate life, but the scenario is not exactly fresh, and grows stale. ( )
  MikeLindgren51 | Aug 7, 2018 |
I was hoping for something along the lines of Then We Came to the End or Company. I didn't think this book was as good as either one of those. It takes place at an unnamed company in New York where slowly everyone is getting fired. It had some funny moments, but overall I thought it could have been better. ( )
  i.should.b.reading | Jan 15, 2016 |
Showing 1-5 of 19 (next | show all)
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Well you don't get a town like this for nothing / So here's what you've got to do / You work your way to the top of the world / Then you break your life in two
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On the surface, it's relaxed. -Who Died? Chapter 1
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Ever wondered what your boss does all day?Or if there is a higher - perhaps an existential - significance to Microsoft Word malfunctions? This astonishing debut is a scathingly funny look at a group of office workers who have no idea what the unnamed corporation they work for actually does.When it looks like the company may be taken over, fear of redundancy unleashes a deliciously Kafkaesque plot full of the tedium and mistrust of corporate life and the backstabbing bitchiness of our survival-of-the-fittest instincts. We meet Pru, the ex-grad student-turned-spreadsheet drone; Laars, the hysteric whose work anxiety follows him into his tooth-grinding dreams; and Jonah, the secret striver who must pick his allegiance. Assailed from all sides, Park's idiosyncratic cast of characters battle paranoia, boredom and the complexities of the lunch break as each struggles to figure out who among them is trying to bring the company down - and why. Rich with Orwellian doublespeak, filled with sabotage and romance and capturing the relentless monotony and paranoia of office life with uncanny precision, Personal Days is a novel for anyone who's ever worked in an office and wondered, 'Where does the time go? Where does life go? And whose banana is in the fridge?'

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