Not Working

March 28, 2016
Owens’s stellar debut novel, composed of vignettes, concerns recently unemployed 20-something Londoner Claire Flannery, who has quit her communications job in an attempt to find her purpose. Claire has the luxury to do this thanks to some savings and her patient boyfriend, Luke, a brain surgeon in training with whom Claire owns a home. As her unemployment begins to stretch over several months, Claire finds herself plagued with doubts, such as her jealousy at Luke’s flirtatious colleague Fiona and her wilting at people’s disapproving attitudes toward her hiatus. Finding herself in stasis after a few half-attempts at job searching, Claire drinks too much at times and plunges into petulant states in which she starts arguments fueled by her insecurities. Owens’s protagonist may not always be likable, but this makes her all the more relatable. The author summons an ugly truth in the way Claire’s self-doubts test loved ones and turn otherwise fine situations unpleasant. Though the novel resolves in an inevitable way, this doesn’t detract from Owens’s ability to take the potentially trite problem-of-the-privileged trope and deftly craft it into readable fun.

March 15, 2016
In Owens' rollicking debut novel, an indecisive millennial wallows in "voluntary unemployment," trying the patience of everyone around her. When Claire Flannery decides to leave her job in "creative communications" to find a career she's more passionate about, she first has to figure out where her passion actually lies. Her live-in boyfriend, Luke, happens to be a brain surgeon-in-training, and Claire envies his clear-cut path to success. In the meantime, all her friends have climbed London's corporate ladder, leaving Claire to wonder where she fits in her social circle. Brash but observant, Claire has a tendency to speak without thinking, which lands her in hot water with her mother. Without the emotional support of her parents, Claire begins an inevitable downward spiral, drowning her sorrows in gallons of wine, self-pity, and bad decisions. Thankfully, Owens uses quick, sharp vignettes to move us through Claire's London, so we're never asked to wallow with her main character for too long. These sketches have the added benefit of giving us snapshots of Claire's interior struggle. With trademark 20-something selfishness, Claire has the ability to turn even a toothbrush cup on the sink or a weed growing out of a foundation into a metaphor about her failed life. To her credit, Owens deploys a deft sense of humor to help us laugh at the incongruities of contemporary upper-middle-class crisis. In Owens' hands, even Claire's long-overdue visit to a dentist results in a misunderstanding that sums up the shame, absurdity, and hopefulness of the overskilled, underemployed worker. Since Claire already has Luke, Owens frees her character from the constraints of the marriage plot haunting similar rom-com titles like Bridget Jones's Diary. Rather than, "Reader, I married him," we get the sense Claire might wind up happily dating a new career, if only she can decide on one. While her privilege never quite catches up with her, this hapless protagonist will leave younger readers laughing--and wincing--in recognition.

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May 15, 2016
Owens offers a millennial take on the traditional British chick-lit heroine in her first novel, which focuses on the trials and tribulations of Claire, who left her job at a London marketing firm in hopes of finding work that she's passionate about. All her free time leads to significant navel-gazing, and the vignettes that comprise the novel resemble an amusing personal Tumblr, with topics ranging from odd behavior observed on the Tube, strange dreams, wry observations on friendship, and an ongoing battle with an invasive plant growing out of the front of her home. As with most chick lit, relationships are at the heart of the story but not in the way readers may expect. Claire is generally secure in her relationship with her boyfriend. It's Claire's relationship with her mother, strained by an off-the-cuff comment that Claire made at her grandfather's funeral, that provides the central conflict of the book. Claire is a realistically awkward character who will appeal to readers looking for a less-angsty take on the new adult trend.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)