Yesterday I started a new painting, something I was hoping might turn into the cover art of Cassandra Brings Disaster, and I really hated how it turned out so I decided to keep painting over it and turn it into a new painting in my Distressed Layers series. It’s not done yet, at least I don’t think it is. There’s something about it that still feels unresolved to me, so I will keep on going.
Meanwhile, between the heat and my allergies, I’ve been staying home a lot, and it’s been a good opportunity to read through the 550-plus page tome of a novel I picked up in Amsterdam.
Work Horse by Caroline Palmer is a novel about a young woman working in magazine publishing in New York City in the early 2000s. Clo is hired as an editorial assistant and learns very fast that not only does the glamorous world of the magazine and of New York in general function according to rules she has yet to learn, but also that she is not destined for full access to its higher spheres no matter how diligent she is. The world she discovers seems to be keen on using work horses such as herself while only bestowing glory on show horses – privileged young people of good pedigree such as her friend and cubicle mate, Davis. While Davis does open some doors into the world of privilege for Clo, ultimately Clo knows that the vast difference between them can never be truly bridged, thus her admiration for Davis and her friendship with her are tinged with the worst kind of covetousness. Other complicated and deeply flawed characters enter the scene too, and Clo seems determined to do anything necessary to get ahead, though her most heinous acts are actually nonsensical and followed by regret (which makes her both more likeable and very frustrating!). The novel gets darker as one reads on, but some of the darkness is hard to pinpoint or fully understand. The reader is hooked by the mystery of it all, and I have to say, now that I’m done reading I am still puzzled by some of the things that transpired. I really wish I had someone to discuss this book with!
I even made my sweet friend, the music teacher, listen to a detailed account of the plot (and various subplots) while we were out on our evening walk tonight. He really is a very nice and patient friend! He said he got it, why I was so fascinated with this book. He said he recognized many themes from my own books (petty theft, a jealous friend), but really, there’s a deeper reason why this novel resonated with me.
See, the book is set in New York in the early 2000s and it’s about a young woman being a train wreck, and I think that should be a literary genre. It reminded me in some ways of Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee (though the protagonist of that book is definitely ambitious and often misguided but not unethical) and it reminded me of my own first novel, Dogs with Bagels (though my protagonist, too, makes some morally grey choices but is not nearly as flawed as Clo). There are many things these books have in common, mostly a general sense of wanting to belong to a higher echelon of society in New York than the one they are destined for, and making sacrifices (and compromises) for it. There’s also the theme of the best friend whose circumstances are much better. There’s the squatting in said friend’s apartment. There are designer goods and drinks and meals and carfare the young protagonists in each book can not afford but find ways to acquire (at the expense of their credit scores, their morals, or their sanity). There is a sense in all three books that in New York everything is possible – but that these possible things don’t necessarily happen, which is the cruel nature of things, and the kind of wasted hope that gets these young women to throw caution to the wind and make disastrous choices. Then again, that last part is probably true elsewhere too, it’s just a little more in your face in New York.
If you’ve read any of these books, can we be friends? Can we discuss?
