The Beautiful Bureaucrat

Posted on 09 May 2017 by Helen Phillips

A young wife s new job in an enigmatic organization pits her against the unfeeling machinations of the universe in this inventive and compulsively page turning first novelIn a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only as The Database After a long period of joblessness, she s not inclined to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up, Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings the office s scarred pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards echoes eerily down the long halls When one evening her husband Joseph disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread As other strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about Josephine s work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something powerful is gathering its own form within her She realizes that in order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city and beyond Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a novel of rare restraint and imagination With it, Helen Phillips enters the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder luminous and new. Best Download [ The Beautiful Bureaucrat ] by [ Helen Phillips ] For Kindle ePUB or eBook – kino-fada.fr to pull off a book like this successfully, it needs to either be very strong in concept or very strong in character, and i don t think this book did either particularly well it s not that you can t hang a book on a series of striking images, but you can t do that and also make me like it as far as the concept goes i ve read variations of this theme in many different works from kafka and orwell and melville in the work is soul killing and bureaucracy surreal aspect to jonathan carroll in thi to pull off a book like this successfully, it needs to either be very strong in concept or very strong in character, and i don t think this book did either particularly well it s not that you can t hang a book on a series of striking images, but you can t do that and also make me like it as far as the concept goes i ve read variations of this theme in many different works from kafka and orwell and melville in the work is soul killing and bureaucracy surreal aspect to jonathan carroll in this book s big reveal if i hadn t encountered it before, maybe my mind would have beenblown, but one does not listen to leonard cohen and then get super impressed by ryan adams and the characters i don t need to like the characters, but i need them to have character this was too slippery joseph has no defining characteristics to spe...NO SPOILERS How to define The Beautiful Bureaucrat This might be the biggest problem with this slim book and slight tale it doesn t seem to know what it is Is it a thriller A dystopian A mystery A combination of all three Faintly echoing parts of 1984, The Beautiful Bureaucrat tells of office drone Josephine, who accepts a position entering data all day, every day Then she realizes what the data mean It seems that from here this story could morph into a heart pumping dystopian thri NO SPOILERS How to define The Beautiful Bureaucrat This might be the biggest problem with this slim book and slight tale it doesn t seem to know what it is Is it a thriller A dystopian A mystery A combination of all three Faintly e...Sometimes I pick up a book just because of the cover or the title and I know nothing about the book itself My daughter works at the US State Dept and the cover reminded me of her in an odd way It is a short book, almost a novella, so I thought why not Holy Smokes I read the book in one sitting and thought what the hell did I just read I took a breath and read it again and wept My gosh I haven t read a book like this since my university days Most reviewers are labeling this little ta Sometimes I pick up a book just because of the cover or the title and I know nothing about the book itself My daughter works at the US State Dept and the cover reminded me of her in an odd way It is a short book, almost a novella, so I thought why not Holy Smokes I read the book in one sitting and thought what the hell did I just read I took a breath and read it again and wept My gosh I haven t read a book like this since my university days Most reviewers are labeling this little tale dystopian but once you read it thoroughly you understand it for what it truly is a beautiful, haunting piece of extential realism It simply took my breath away Kafka, Satre, Camus.it all came back to me through Phillips writing And I have to say that her ...The cruel noise of keys, shoving, twisting, was she at the wrong door in the wrong building on the wrong street in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong city in the wrong state in the wrong country on the wrong planet Having finished this book, I can confidently tell you that I cannot enlighten you as to the answers of any of those questions But, for approximately 174 of 177 pages, I had a pretty great time wondering and turned pages at the rapid pace of the quoted passage above However, as I The cruel noise of keys, shoving, twisting, was she at the wrong door in the wrong building on the wrong street in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong city in th...3.5 I just finished this and am still not sure of what I read A fever dream, a hallucination, possibly a nightmare, maybe all of them All I know is that I started reading this and was hooked, wanted to find out what was going on Josephine and Joseph move to the city from the hinterlands where they were unable to find jobs At first in the city things do not seem much better, but than miracle of miracles they both find jobs Josephine, hired by som...I m still not sure what prompted me to get this book I ve never read Kafka and I don t ordinarily go in for magical realism Besides, a book about a woman whose job is constantly entering numbers into a database excuse me Database sounds too much like my own life to be called fantasy Okay, Ursula Le Guin did gush over it and she has never let me down but still, what was I thinking I don t know, but I m sure glad I did I was hooked from the first paragraph The person who interviewed her h I m still not sure what prompted me to get this book I ve never read Kafka and I don t ordinarily go in for magical realism Besides, a book about a woman whose job is constantly entering numbers into a database excuse me Database sounds too much like my own life to be called fantasy Okay, Ursula Le Guin did gush over it and she has never let me down but still, what was I thinking I don t know, but I m sure glad I did I was hooked from the first paragraph The person who interviewed her had no face Under other circumstances if the job market hadn t been so bleak for so long, if the summer hadn t been so glum and muggy this might have discouraged Josephine from stepping through the door of the office in the first place As things were, her initial thought wasOh, perfect, the interviewer s appearance probably deterred other applicants If I were to compare this book to any other I ve read it would have to be Jose Saramago s Blindness but even that isn t a perfect match While th...After both her and her husband struggle to find work for far too long, Josephine is thrilled when she s hired to work on The Database In a windowless building that takes up several city blocks, she works in a small office, entering strangely coded numbers in an increasingly mind numbing task Over time, Josephine s once supportive husband grows distant and work on The Database wears at her until she is desperate to discover its true purpose.In just 192 pages, The Beautiful Bureaucrat packs in After both her and her husband struggle to find work for far too long, Josephine is thrilled when she s hired to work on The Database In a windowless building that takes up several city blocks, she works in a small office, entering strangely coded numbers in an increasingly mind numbing task Over time, Josephine s once supportive husband grows distant and work on The Database wears at her until she is desperate to discover its true purpose.In just 192 p...Dreamy hallucinatory , imaginative and completely bizarre I loved this strange little book but I suspect from the low rating that I am in the minority here This is one I may read again sometime just to savor Ms Phillips inventiveness and imagery.Josephine Jones has just move to the big city and is in need of a job She finds one where her job is to input information into a database She will sit in an office with smudged pink walls, in a building with no windows Her only job is to enter the information and don t ask questions But curiosity is a part of human nature Will she be able to continue the job when she discovers what it is she is really doing Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt for the opportunity to read and review this bo Josephine Jones has just move to the big city and is in need of a job She finds o...Once I started reading this book, there was no way for me to stop My reading experience was essentially this an inability to move from my bed, an inability to stop reading hilarious lines to whoever was so lucky to be near me at the time, and, once I was alone, a lot of me giggling and or gasping to myself It was a great time.From how I ve descr...

English
09 May 2017

Helen Phillips