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the complete review - fiction

The Beautiful Bureaucrat

by
Helen Phillips

general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

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Our Assessment:

B : reasonably fun approaches and ideas

See our review for fuller assessment.

  From the Reviews:

• "(T)here are a few enjoyably absurdist touches -- the ethereality of birth and death reduced to the prosaic matter of paperwork. Perhaps, however, it would have been stronger as a short story; too often details are repeated, and many of its observations will be familiar to those even casually versed in dystopian fiction. " - Financial Times, Dan Einav
  
  
• "Phillips writes particularly well about tedium (.....) (T)here is a grim power to this novel, and to Phillips’s remorseless scrutiny of her poor characters. The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a fascinating and gruelling portrait of extreme capitalism and the degradation of ordinary lives." - Joanna Kavenna, The Guardian
  
  
• "Part dystopian fantasy, part thriller, part giddy literary-nerd wordplay, Helen Phillips' The Beautiful Bureaucrat, is both a page-turner and a novel rich in evocative, starkly philosophical language. (...) This slim novel, which can easily be devoured in a day, doesn't always live up to Phillips' great ambitions. (...) But what is most impressive here is that Phillips has taken plot-twist epiphanies that are hardly new, in either literature or Hollywood, and delivered eerie, stomach-dropping surprises even to those who may believe they have it figured out." - Gina Frangello, The Los Angeles Times
  
  
• "(U)nusual and deeply interesting (.....) It’s an irresistible setup and if that’s all there were, it would be enough. (...) The novel is at its most heartfelt when it moves past allegory and symbolism and zeros in on the relationship between Josephine and her husband." - Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
  
  
• "Phillips’s thrillerlike pacing and selection of detail as the novel unfolds is highly skilled. (...) The characters, too, can feel generic, even cutesy at times. (...) Style aside, what makes The Beautiful Bureaucrat a unique contribution to the body of existential literature is its trajectory, as the story telescopes in two directions, both outward to pose macro questions about God and the universe, and inward to pose intimate inquiries about marriage and fidelity." - Jamie Quatro, The New York Times Book Review

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The Beautiful Bureaucrat centers entirely on Josephine Newbury, who recently moved "to this unfamiliar city" after her husband landed a job here. The couple, both long unemployed, are down-and-almost-out, but perhaps are getting on their feet again: the novel opens with Josephine at a job interview, getting herself hired, making them a two-income family again. True, when she gets home she finds they've been evicted from their apartment, but the basic trajectory suggests the possibility of improving circumstances (even as the series of dismal sublets they then take residence in are reminders that they haven't quite made it yet).
       Josephine's new job is of the mind-numbing, repetitious, and perplexing data-entry sort. In fact, Josephine literally doesn't know what she's doing -- and it's unnecessary that she understands her work in order to do it: she is a cog, serving a specific function, nothing more.
       Her employers reassure her: "But no need to be curious". Of course, she is curious, and she eventually is compelled to explore what the hell this immense anonymous monolith -- the epitome of a 'Kafkaesque' workplace -- and her role in it actually are.
       A crisis of conscience comes when Josephine puts together the pieces. "I realized what I do here", she admits to a co-worker -- and she doesn't think she can continue doing it.
       Meanwhile, on the domestic front, she doesn't seem to know what her husband is actually up to -- there's no explanation of what his job is or involves -- and their relationship seems to be getting tested as he is increasingly out of reach. The personal and the professional come to overlap, with new challenges that she must quickly adapt to; these also clear up some of the mysteries in the book, as the pieces fall further into place.
       The Beautiful Bureaucrat nicely evokes corporate culture and mind-numbing drudge-(paper-)work, with a nicely sinister edge to things to keep readers intrigued. Josephine's domestic situation is less satisfactorily realized: for much of the novel Joseph remains largely remote and even absent, even as The Beautiful Bureaucrat ultimately reveals itself to also be a (modern ?) family romance.
       Phillips engages in a great deal of wordplay, with Josephine not so much mishearing as warping what she hears, all part of an: "irrepressible voice, always twisting language from within -- his wordplay met her unrest". Some of this is fun, but a little also goes a long way. At a doctor's office she sees a poster with the words:

BE SURE TO EAT THREE HOURS
BEFORE DONATING BLOOD

     What's it like to eat three hours ? She was feeling impish. How do they taste ? Like cotton candy or grass or concrete ?

- M.A.Orthofer, 13 August 2015

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Links:

• Henry Holt publicity page
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• Q & A at Slate

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• Sarah's Book Shelves
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• The Steadfast Reader
• TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog
• The Washington Times

• Official site

• See Index of Contemporary American fiction
• Other books from Pushkin Press under review

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About the Author:

       American author Helen Phillips was born in 1983.

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