STILL NEEDS WORK

Marianne is at a conference in San Francisco when Sharon, her Baltimore-based boss, gives her a heads up: HR will soon inform her of a department-wide layoff, and she’ll lose her telecommuting data job. She recently (and reluctantly) moved back to Kansas City, Missouri, from California following the loss of her husband, who died from “a long and expensive illness that left me able to afford only this wretched little house in this wretched neighborhood.” As Marianne looks for new jobs and collects severance and unemployment, she also works part time at the local hardware store, with its owner and sons helping her fix up her house and her ideas spurring store sales. She continues to work at the store even after Sharon sets her up with a contract position at a Chicago startup, which is partly remote but requires some on-site visits. By the novel’s end, Marianne experiences an incident near her home that forces a decision about whether she should move to Chicago for a full-time position or take a technology support job at the local school system for half the salary. California-based Barker, whose previous book was East of Troost (2022), has once again set a novel in the changing Kansas City region that she hails from with a lead who sometimes feels out of place. While it’s a bit puzzling that Marianne bought this house in this area, given that her parents “moved away in the mid-1970s,” Barker has crafted a relatable, weary modern worker in Marianne, who’s full of wry observances. (“All I’ve done so far is determine that I want to make a living by sitting on my butt at home.”)