Jillian

£8.99

Twenty-four-year-old Megan may have her whole life ahead of her, but it already feels like a dead end, thanks to her dreadful job as a gastroenterologist’s receptionist and her heart-clogging resentment of the success and happiness of everyone around her. But no one stokes Megan’s bitterness quite like her coworker, Jillian, a grotesquely optimistic, thirty-five-year-old single mother whose chirpy positivity obscures her mounting struggles. Megan and Jillian’s lives become increasingly precarious as their faulty coping mechanisms – denial, self-help books, alcohol, religion, prescription painkillers, obsessive criticism, alienated boyfriends, and, in Jillian’s case, the misguided purchase of a dog – send them spiralling toward their downfalls.

In stock

Description

From the author of the ‘great’ (Dolly Alderton), ‘terrific’ (Zadie Smith) The New Me, comes a subversive, hilarious portrait of two colleagues, each more like the other than they would care to admit.

‘Wretchedly riveting’ Jia Tolentino, New Yorker

Butler is an essential contemporary voice’ Literary Hub

‘A master of writing about work and its discontents’ The Millions


Megan
is only twenty-four but her life feels like a dead end. Working as a gastroenterologist’s receptionist and resenting the success and happiness of her friends, the only thing that makes her feel better is obsessively critiquing the behaviour of her colleague, Jillian. A grotesquely optimistic thirty-five-year-old single mother, Jillian’s chirpy positivity obscures her mounting struggles – until her downfall is precipitated by the purchase of a dog . . .

‘Outrageous and amusing … reads like rubbernecking or a junk-food binge, compelling a horrified fascination and bleak laughter’ Kirkus

‘The funniest book I’ve read in a long time, but also one of the most important ones’ The Rumpus

Additional information

Weight 0.19 kg
Dimensions 19.6 × 12.8 × 2.4 cm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

199

Language

English

Edition

Paperback original

Dewey

813.6 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K

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