On the Clock by Claire Baglin: book review
Overview: I would classify Claire Baglin's book as a novella as it is quite short. It makes the perfect paperback to carry around with you because it's so slim. It's translated from French by Jordan Stump and chronicles two strands of story. The first is focused on a young adult's job working in fast food for the summer. This is interlaced with her father's story of working in a factory. The book examines how these jobs take advantage of their employees without offering a path to advancement or a way out of the intensely labor focused work. The point being mostly that these jobs will chew you up and spit you out, no matter how much pride and diligence you put into the work, how good you are. And in the disillusionment of that particular myth, it succeeds. Overall: 3.75
Thoughts: My thesis on this book is that it would've been an incredible short story made out of the first thirty or so pages but that stretching it made the narrative come up short. This first part of the book takes a genius approach interweaving this girl's interview for the fast food job with this fond memory from childhood that takes place in the same fast food restaurant. You see her emotional connection to the place, being a bright spot in an otherwise difficult childhood. It brings her family together for a brief moment. The way she connects the past and present scenes works extremely well in this section.
The issue is that in expanding this idea, the book starts to fold. The author positions the daughter as the central narrative voice, but at times, she tries to give the father's perspective and show scenes at his work that she isn't privy to or that come from inside his head. This transition is done awkwardly and feels somewhat jarring and indecisive. The prose goes from referring to him as her father to using his name in these transitions, yet there's still some trappings that feel like she is still narrating it. I just found this sort of clumsy.
Additionally, after this first section, the book doesn't really spend much time developing a plot or characters. They aren't fleshed-out people so much as representative of whole populations. The scenes focus on the logistics of working in the drive through and the poor treatment which is meant to parallel the father's scenes working in the factory where he is also treated as less than a person. The book makes important points but by not developing the characters, it struggles to bring a true story behind the message to life and create an emotionally resonant attachment with the reader.
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