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    Help Wanted: A Novel
    Help Wanted: A Novel
    Help Wanted: A Novel
    Audiobook9 hours

    Help Wanted: A Novel

    Written by Adelle Waldman

    Narrated by Amanda Ronconi

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. comes a funny, eye-opening tale of work in contemporary America.

    Every day at 3:55 a.m., members of Team Movement clock in for their shift at big-box store Town Square in a small upstate New York town. Under the eyes of a self-absorbed and barely competent boss, they empty the day’s truck of merchandise, stock the shelves, and scatter before the store opens and customers arrive. Their lives follow a familiar if grueling routine, but their real problem is that Town Square doesn’t schedule them for enough hours―most of them are barely getting by, even while working second or third jobs. When store manager Big Will announces he is leaving, the members of Movement spot an opportunity. If they play their cards right, one of them just might land a management job, with all the stability and possibility for advancement that that implies. The members of Team Movement―including a comedy-obsessed oddball who acts half his age, a young woman clinging on to her “cool kid” status from high school, and a college football hopeful trying to find a new path―band together to set a just-so-crazy-it-might-work plot in motion.

    Adelle Waldman’s debut novel was a breakout sensation, lauded by the Los Angeles Times as an “exacting character study” with “excellent and witty prose” and described as “incisive and very funny” by the Economist and “brilliant” by both NPR’s Fresh Air and the Washington Post. In her long-awaited follow-up, Waldman brings her unparalleled wit and astute social observation to the world of modern, low-wage work. A humane and darkly comic workplace caper that shines a light on the odds low-wage workers are up against in today’s economy, Help Wanted is a funny, moving tale of ordinary people trying to make a living.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSpotify Audiobooks
    Release dateApr 2, 2024
    ISBN9798368999760
    Help Wanted: A Novel
    Author

    Adelle Waldman

    Adelle Waldman is a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University's journalism school. She worked as a reporter at the New Haven Register and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal's website. Her articles also have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The New Republic, Slate, The Wall Street Journal, and other national publications. She is the author of the novels The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P and Help Wanted. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for Help Wanted

    4/5

    33 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Refreshing real. Finds the excitement in the mundane. Reminded me so much of places I’ve worked!
    • 5/5
      Amazing! It's a story about the employees of a retail store who work in the freight receiving and distribution Department. Over several weeks we hear from each one and the complicated politics aspirations and emotional interaction between them. Somehow she manages to make every last word seem highly realistic. The dialogue is nearly flawless and each person is well developed enough that by the end of the book I felt I knew them all and I could easily picture them and the working environment of the store. I found myself caring very much what happened to all of them and how the story works out. Even that was realistic. I expected it to be Pollyanna or more likely cynical and there is a thread of semi-accepting commentary about the injustices and the pure happenstance, the minor twist of fate that can make a big change in life for the worst for the better. I found myself rooting for nearly all of them and one way or another. It was just incredibly realistic and I couldn't believe that I was on the edge of my seat to find out what was going to happen. Who would think the details of ordinary lives going through ordinary troubles and with ordinary hopes and dreams could be so interesting. She just did a wonderful job of pulling in the reader in this engrossing story. I look forward to reading more from this author! Normally four stars is the most I give to anybody short of the big ones like Joyce carolotes the literary fiction that my new writers can only dream of. But this was just so darn good in its own quiet little way that I'm going to break my rule. Not one to miss I think.
    • 4/5
      Fresh and nuanced look at life working in retail in 2024.