The Employees by Olga Ravn
It’s rare to finish a book and wonder if it was lacking or if it was so smart that you just didn’t get it.
It’s rarer still to have a group of seven people, many of whom are very well read, say the same.
I read The Employees as part of a book club; it’s not something I’d usually pick up and I went into it knowing pretty much nothing about it.
The book is recounted as partial interview recordings from employees on a space ship and framed as a productivity report by the overarching corporation. Some of the employees are human, some are humanoid. We hear about how they view each other and their tasks and perceptions.
It’s an experimental book. It plays with form, the amount of information given, and leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Unfortunately, I don’t feel like it worked. Each section was really well written but for most of the book it felt disjointed and awkward. I kept waiting for the moment when it clicks and everything falls into place, with the early entries making sense in the new context, but that never happened.
While the book felt more cohesive as it progressed and a narrative was established, I felt like it was missing an overarching why. There are many momentary “why”s, single entries that pose questions and raise topics, none of which are returned to or explored.
The framing as a productivity report from a corporation felt like it was draped over the interviews after they were written. As if that context was added in an attempt to make it more topical, which particularly jarred with the way the characters spoke in the interviews. Few mentions of work, workplace issues, productivity or process. And frankly way too few dives into corporate-speak drivel.
Furthermore, the characters felt barely existent. This might be the biggest reason it didn’t work for me. I like strong characterisation and arcs, neither of which are present in this book.
I haven’t read a lot of science fiction, but the more literary science fiction I read, the more I’m convinced that most people have never read any of it. Frequently I’ll see books positioned as having new and unique takes only to find them rehashing the same concepts that have bounced through the genre for decades.
Maybe t I should think about each momentary why and not the overarching idea.
Maybe I’m being too harsh because I don’t tend towards experimental fiction.
Maybe the whole thing went over my head and that’s why I didn’t enjoy it.
Or maybe it just didn’t really work.