We’ve picked People from my Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami as our June book club pick! A collection of short stories that might be a bit similar to The Employees in size and setup, but also different enough in subject matter! It’s about weird shit happening to people who might live in the same neighbourhood, but we’ll have to read it to find out. I’m excited to read something Japanese and to have another good discussion!
Here are the important details:
We are meeting on the 7th of June at 20:00.
The book club is at Opzoomerstraat 12C, Studio Tideland
The book club is Bring Your Own Booze, so bring drinks (at least) for yourself.
Want to join? Email me at boredtodeathbookclub@gmail.com to reserve your seat. I will email you back with a confirmation. I only take email reservations because social media sign ups are a bit more uncertain.
The book club is free, but donations are welcome to help cover the location costs. You can buy me a coffee or use a tikkie.
Have ideas for the book club? I love to hear it!
What to read next if you enjoyed The Employees
Olga Ravn has written a lot, but unfortunately nothing but The Employees has been translated into English or Dutch. September will change that with her novel My Work about a woman sinking into depression after childbirth. If you want more office novels, I would recommend Severance by Ling Ma or Dear Commitee Members by Julie Schumacher and I’ve heard many good things about Several People are Typing from Calvin Casulke. During the book club we also talked about the TV show Severance, not to be confused with the book, which is also well worth a watch if you’re into weird workplace fiction.
The Employees Recap
It was another good discussion with plenty of things to talk about. I enjoyed that many people said that this book broke their brain, both because of the subject and the form. It was an interesting to discuss whether or not the book was a good critique of the workplace, what its philosophy was and whether or not we might have asked the novel to be more than it actually was. Overal, it was a good read for most of us. Plenty of interesting things to grab onto, pretty language and loads of weird imagery that was hard to imagine and which we all saw differently. For some the book took a while to click, for others it never worked but there were also big fans, so a really great group to talk about the book with!
If you made it this far, then here’s a secret book recommendation for you. Thanks for reading!