Join our Instagram channel to discuss our book of the month, Help Wanted by Adelle Waldman, as we read it. From every-thought-you-had-while-reading to exclusive notes from the author, there’s a lot to unpack here.
For our October title for The Nod Book Club, we picked a novel that’s a telling reflection of the times we live in and our out-of-control consumerist culture, told through the lives of a group of employees at a big-box store in Potterstown in upstate New York. But then, Help Wanted is also a workplace novel about the little ambitions and allyships we develop in the place we spend a third of our day. Think The Office, but with more reality and greater empathy.
So, what is Help Wanted about?
Town Square is a superstore in Potterstown, which is ailing from the loss of jobs caused by the withdrawal of IBM, the community’s largest employer. The plot of the novel centres on Team Movement aka Logistics, a group of nine employees who work in the warehouse of Town Square, unloading the delivery trucks and stocking the shelves.
Despite their diverse backgrounds and motivations, they’re united by one thing—their dislike for Meredith, their executive manager. When words gets around that Meredith will likely be promoted to the level of store manager, the nine of them, with varying degrees of excitement, decide to aid her promotion in the hope that she’ll be plucked off their day-to-day lives and Little Will, whom they like, will get her job and supervisory duties. That also means one of the nine could get Little Will’s job…
As each one navigates what this could mean for them, we get a glimpse of the various forms ambition could take and alliances are forged.
Why should I pick it?
Who doesn’t love some workplace drama? Add to that a good dose of corporate lingo, HR speak (of course people are put on the “fast track” for future promotions based on their “drive” and “initiative”), and characters with backstories who find a way to squeeze some fun out of the mundane, be it with a sparkly hair clip or by offloading a delivery truck by telling a story with the order in which they unload the goods (peanut butter and granola bars followed by toilet paper equals metabolism), and you’re right there.
You’re in a world where “insubordination” is a banned word, but where workers are encouraged to have other jobs in order to make a living. As you go through the litany of goods that a dead-eyed employee keeps scanning in the wee hours of the day—cordless vacuum cleaners, kitty litter, shrink-wrapped lampshades, rubber mats to put in the footwell of a car—the novel also holds a mirror to the useless modern artefacts we surround ourselves with.
Meredith is a nightmare; “Push, Nicole, push! Push like you mean it!” she yells at Nicole as the latter scans the boxes tumbling towards her on the line (“Like some kind of demented midwife,” writes Waldman). As people get shortchanged again and again, the laughs keep on coming, even when you feel trapped in the dingy warehouse with the roaches—the people in Movement who work in the dark and scatter at eight as the day gets brighter.
Tell me a little about the author
Adelle Waldman is the best-selling author of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., which was named a best book of the year of The New Yorker, Economist, NPR, Elle, and many others. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. She lives in New York State.
