Oh yeah, what is wrong with “her”—i.e. me—is, I’m the spare human in the world. If you counted everyone up, I’m the one who’d be left over, the one who does nothing, only takes, always takes things, a drain on everyone, completely pathetic like the poor old—poor old thing, the poor old wooden spoon, floating in the dirty sink…
Sadly this is a completely accurate description of her. Frankly, I have no desire to read about someone like that unless they show some signs of growth or developing maturity, but I did not feel that was the case here.
There were some good things about this book: one thing I liked was the narrative style. The book consists of what are essentially little snippets of Claire’s life—usually a couple sentences or a paragraph, at most a page or two—with headings. It was an interesting experience to read a story told in such a fleeting way.
Ultimately, while there were some good bits, I just could not get over my irritation with Claire. I expected this to be right up my alley, especially since I’m 24 years old and still, to some extent, trying to figure out what I want the rest of my life to look like, but Not Working missed the mark by a mile.