(Posted by Susan Turbie on Goodreads on May 5, 2024)
5 Stars
After years of loyal service, Sarah Morris, an experienced, highly competent, middle-aged senior editor with a publishing firm, gets demoted and increasingly sidelined and exploited. The novel deals with her struggles to regain control of her career and her destiny, amid the constant downsizing, outsourcing and backstabbing that is corporate life today.
As someone who has been through a similar experience to that of the eponymous heroine, (a woman approaching 50 made redundant after years of loyal service), I felt a great deal of empathy for Sarah. That said, she did sometimes get on my nerves: she’s a little paranoid, with something of a persecution mania (note the number of times she refers to what’s happening to her – and many other employees – as “sabotage” and “against her”). The very title of the book is telling: The War against Sarah Morris. But it’s not about her, it’s not personal – which is of course both the point and the tragedy of the situation: it’s completely impersonal, it’s nothing you’ve done wrong, but at the same time, all the things you did right – your experience, competence, loyalty, sense of professional ethics and conscientiousness, dedication – count for nothing in the end. It’s all about bottom line.
The fact that there’s a single plot strand, few characters and that most of the action takes place in the workplace make the novel’s universe seem a little narrow and oppressive at times. But it’s intentional: the author cleverly (and uncomfortably) captures that stifling atmosphere of relentless stress, anguish and uncertainty of having an unrewarding job where you’re undervalued by your bosses and are completely dispensable: the lack of control, being at the mercy of the ruthless, soul-crushing corporate machine with its endless rounds of takeovers, lay-offs “restructuring”; the armies of technocrats who blind you with corporate management jargon, always banging on about streamlining and bottom lines, downsizing and outsourcing organizations to within an inch of their life. That’s what it’s like when you’re stuck in a job you hate, can’t find a new one and can’t just chuck it all in because you have bills to pay and a mortgage: there is no escape, no relief, no respite.
The plot is nicely paced and it reads well. As I said earlier, I occasionally wanted to shake Sarah and yell at her to stand up for herself more: she’s a bit of a doormat, way too trusting, and something of a glutton for punishment (why oh why would she agree to organize a leaving do for her narcissistic sociopath of a boss?!) That said, her passivity and lack of self-esteem are party explained by the few glimpses we see of her personal life: her parents are hyper-critical and overbearing, and while her husband’s basically a nice enough guy, he’s not hugely supportive of Sarah’s plans to regain control of her career and life.
But despite her flaws, Sarah is very believable and sympathetic, and after everything she’s been through, she still manages to be something of an idealist. And that’s why the reader is rooting for her, along with all the other victims of rapacious capitalism and the gig economy. Her journey will resonate vividly – if uncomfortably – with anyone who’s ever been made redundant, or had a petty, tyrannical, pathologically ambitious boss, and the way she navigates the treacherous waters of corporate life, eventually to rise again to reshape her destiny will inspire and give hope.
Kathleen Jones, The Quirky Novelist 