Help Wanted (Adelle Waldman) – Book Review

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.

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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.