The novels I have earlier recommended in this series have a wide range of settings, actors, and interactional arrangements.

• Anne Berest’s The Postcard is about the fate of a French Jewish family during the Holocaust and the mother and daughter’s attempts to shed light on what happened, beginning with the receipt of a postcard with the names of the four family members who were killed.

• Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts is set in a fictious authoritarian United States of America, and deals with the resistance of a Chinese mother and the determination of her son to find her.

• Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere is set at Shakers High, a suburb of Cleveland for those who can afford luxurious single houses, and the interactions of two women and their children.

• Paul Lynch’ Prophet Song fictionalizes Ireland into a fascist state in which a mother tries to survive with her children, but at a great loss, and finally a daring escape to the continent.

• Laurent Mauvignier’s The Birthday Party plays in an isolated hamlet in the French countryside, in which the present and, especially, the past of the husband’s wife come to clash violently in a Western-style final gunfight.

• In Seichō Matsumoto’s classic detective story Tokyo Express, two detectives succeed in unraveling the complex process preceding a murder that looked, at first sight, like a clear double suicide.

• Luke Jennings’ Killing Eve trilogy is the story of a focused psychopathic assassin and her more intuitive and emotional pursuer, an MI5/MI6 officer. There are plenty of killing methods and bodies on display. But at its heart, the novel is about two very different women who are attracted to each other and try to create a stable, loving relationship and a safe environment for it.

• Itamar Vieira Junior’s Crooked Plow takes us to a plantation of former slaves in Bahia, Brazil. It is about the changes brought about by a new generation that wants more than a subsistence existence based on the whims of an exploitative plantation owner. The novel is also about the importance of the supernatural in the lives of plantation workers and the role of violence.

• Charlotte Wood’s The Weekend relies on the contrasting the four very different elderly women and their group dynamics after death removed the one of them whose house they must now tidy up. Their different approaches in dealing with their past, present, and future includes the painful insight, “my life has not been what I believed it to be.”

Waldman’s novel is set in a big box store the size of several football fields, with 150 employees and six departments, located in Potterstown, New Jersey. However, the story (told mostly in dialogue) concerns only one of these departments, called “Movement” (logistics). It is responsible for unloading the trucks that deliver the goods, storing them in the warehouse, and putting them on the shelves. There are nine people in this department. In today’s jargon, they belong to the “precariat.” They are not paid a living wage, and the company carefully avoids working them too many hours because that would make them eligible for benefits. As a result, even though most of the members of this section have been working in the store for years, they are still treated like temporary workers. The company is strongly opposed to any attempt to organize a union in the store. It is also under pressure from the success of an (unnamed) giant online retailer. Some have second jobs; some rely on food stamps or the local food bank to supplement their income. Some are single parents, living with their parents, in unstable relationships. There are whites, people of color, and a Hispanic migrant with poor English. One very good worker has served several short prison terms. Most of them also have low levels of educational achievements, even missing one of the most basic requirements, the GED (General Educational Development. That test works like an equivalent of a high-school diploma. If a person has this, he/she can go to college.

            The GED plays an important role in the management structure of the store, as there are three levels of management above the workers. These positions require a GED or even a college degree. And these people are salaried employees. They are not paid by the hour but are paid salaries with benefits. Immediately above the workers is the “Group Manager, Movement” (called “Little Will”). Above him is the “Executive Manager, Logistics/Movement” (named “Meredith”). At the top is the “Store Manager” (called “Big Will”). Meredith just moved from Sales to Movement about two months ago. She is intensely disliked by most of the team. Her knowledge of the job is poor, as are her interpersonal and management skills.  

            Then, suddenly, this arrangement is thrown into turmoil by the parent company’s decision to promote the store manager to a better store in Cleveland. Since the new store manager was to be chosen from among the people already working there at the executive manager level, and since Big Will had thought that Meredith was a suitable candidate and had communicated this to his superiors, the workers who disliked her saw an opportunity to get rid of her. At the same time, her promotion to store manager also meant that the group manager would take her position, making the group manager position available to one of the Movement team members who met the educational requirements, had worked in the store for several years, had leadership skills, and was well liked by his or her teammates.  

But the first step was to make sure Meredith was promoted to store manager. A team of three senior regional and national managers would come to see how the store was doing. More importantly, they would interview all members of the Movement team, as well as a competitor’s team, to get a sense of how the two key candidates were doing their jobs and to hear the teams’ assessments of these candidates’ managerial qualities. This led to an initiative by one of the Movement team members. She formed a group of like-minded members who would praise Meredith’s managerial skills, her excellent interpersonal skills, etc. during the interviews. This plan worked well; the visiting managers were impressed. But when the regional managers told Big Will how the interviews had gone so well for Meredith, Big Will was stunned. After all, he knew very well how much their team disliked Meredith.   

He became suspicious. More importantly, while he had initially supported Meredith to succeed him as store manager, his opinion had changed as he observed her performance as executive manager of Movement. This change of heart put him in a difficult position. He could remain silent. But to do so would throw the store management into disarray. So, at a dinner meeting with the visiting managers, he took the risk and withdrew his support for Meredith. Now it was they who were stunned by his change of heart on such short notice. Based on what he had written in Meredith’s personnel file and their conversations that day, the three visitors had all but made up their minds to propose Meredith’s promotion. And now, out of the blue, the store manager announced that he did not think she was qualified to do his job. After a tense discussion of the issues involved, the three managers finally had to agree with Big Will and even commend him for taking the risk and changing his mind based on the information he had gained after Meredith began leading Movement.

Although the Movement Team members’ plan had failed, they did not have to put up with Meredith much longer. First, she had become a lame duck in her position. Second, it became clear that she would be leaving the store to work elsewhere. This renewed a sense of hope among the team members, because if Little Will moved up, his position would be filled by one of them. Such a promotion, even if it was only to a lower management position, would mean that one of them would be able to leave the “precariat” and put his or her life on a more stable footing. Such a hope lived in most of the members of Movement.

MHN

Nonthaburi, Thailand

6 April 2024