summer reading: an assistant novel

When I quit my job from hell, a coworker friend (who was halfway out the door herself) gave me a copy of a book she thought I’d like: Fear and Trembling, by Amelie Nothomb. Nothomb, who is Belgian but spent a large part of her childhood in Japan, wrote the novel based loosely on her experiences in the Japanese workforce. The heroine starts out as a professional at the company and slowly works her way down through the ranks until she finds herself cleaning toilets. It’s well-written, and although the story seems absurd it’s actually heartbreakingly realistic. It’s a book about why work sucks, but it’s also a book about how to find yourself without losing yourself in your job. You can probably find a used copy at the bookstore, as the English-language translation of Fear and Trembling was first published in 2002, and there’s a movie version (but I have not seen it and can’t attest to whether it’s any good).