Help Wanted, the new work from Adelle Waldman, zooms in on a single big-box store in upstate New York. The workers there – each beleaguered with their own problems and trying to survive in the modern day – find themselves with the potential of removing a tiresome colleague and so concoct a plan to do so.
Help Wanted is, ostensibly, a satire on big-box-store America, but is also warmer and more humane than such a description might warrant. Waldman doesn’t sugar-coat the existence of her cast of workers – many of them have to bounce between multiple jobs just to survive – but does imbue them with the kind of empathy and pathos that other great authors (Austen, Shakespeare) manage in their sprawling social comedies.
While it will evoke comparisons of TV’s Superstore in readers, Help Wanted is a little sharper and bleaker, promising no real happy endings for anyone involved. Yet, despite it all, hope persists, and Waldman offers the possibility of a better life out there, making Help Wanted a thoughtful, well-paced read for those seeking a literary examination of capitalist culture from the (imaginary) frontlines.
Help Wanted is out now from Serpent’s Tail.
