Whether you’re WFH or in the office, Christina Quaine has assembled a roll call of the best books that put work-life centre stage...
Office politics! Office romances! Friday drinks! Watercooler chats with colleagues! When someone uses the last of your oat milk from the communal fridge! There are certain things in life that are unique to the working environment and, honestly, this is the stuff we have missed this past year. Here is our pick of the best fiction and non-fiction that’s all about the workplace.
Quartet by Jean Rhys
1. Quartet in Autumn by Barbara Pym
Barbara Pym’s novels are joy-givers, a lesson in quiet, understated comedy. Quartet in Autumn is set in 1970s London, where Letty, Marcia, Norman and Edwin have worked together in the same office for years. Pym skillfully highlights the nuances of colleague relations - Marcia and Norman share a tin of instant coffee as a “convenient arrangement” because “it was cheaper to buy a large tin and share it between them.” As retirement beckons for the four workers, Pym explores how we define ourselves through work and how lonely life can be beyond the office walls.
I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
2. I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron
Ephron’s final book is a series of reflections on her life and we strongly advise making yourself a coffee and settling down with her 20-page essay ‘Journalism: A Love Story’. In it, Ephron is just out of college and forging her career, and her punchy sentences and to-the-point wit make you feel like you’re listening to a characterful aunt. She takes us through what it was like starting out in journalism in New York in the early 1960s - first up, she is a mail girl at Newsweek, before moving to a writer job on New York Post where “everyone smoked, but there were no ashtrays; the burning cigarettes rested on the edges of desks and left dark smudge marks.”
Not Working by Lisa Owens
3. Not Working by Lisa Owens
Our prevailing thought when reading this 2016 debut novel was ‘we’ve all been there.’ Twenty-something Claire has quit her job in ‘creative communications’ to work out what she wants to do with her life and early in the book, she nails it in identifying what she misses about office life: “Free pens, notebooks, coffee, the colour printer. Incidental conversation.” In Not Working, Owens captures how it feels to be cast adrift, unsure of where your life and career are going, from the procrastination that comes with job-hunting - in one scene, Claire gets distracted from job applications by entering various competitions - to the time she returns to her old office and meets her replacement. A funny and relatable read.
A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
4. A Far Cry From Kensington by Muriel Spark
Nancy Hawkins - or Mrs Hawkins, as she is known - is our narrator, looking back, decades on, at her life as a young woman in the 1950s. She works at Ullswater Press, a small publishing house where she is a “general do-all, proof-reader, literary adviser and secretarial stand-in when the respective secretaries of Mr York and Mr Ullswater left to get married and were never replaced.” The office is a chaotic set-up. The office clock tells the wrong time so timekeeping is sporadic. Bills from clients go unpaid. Ivy, the typist, is constantly fielding callers by lying that “Mrs Hawkins is in a meeting, I’m afraid.” A delightful read from the first to last page.
The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
5. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
It’s the book that gave us fiction’s worst-ever boss and, therefore, has given us a cultural reference with which to refer to any tyrannical manager we have the misfortune of working with. Based on Weisberger’s time as an assistant to Anna Wintour at American Vogue, the novel's protagonist is magazine assistant Andy Sachs. She is deeply uninterested in fashion and her life is made rather difficult by the frosty editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestly.
Look At Me by Anita Brookner
6. Look at Me by Anita Brookner Work life will inevitably bring us into contact with charismatic types, people who lead the glossiest of lives. Such is the premise of Brookner’s 1983 novel. Frances Hinton is a young woman, reserved and watchful, who works in the reference library of a medical research institute which studies problems of human behaviour. Her colleagues are her friend, Olivia, Dr Simek and Mrs Halloran who believes that Saturn is to blame “for most anomalies of behaviour.”
Frances’s work days are brightened by the visits of handsome, charming doctor, Nick Fraser, and she soon becomes entwined in the world of Nick and his dazzling wife, Alix. A haunting, yet witty book which encapsulates what it’s like to be taken up - and then discarded by - popular, glamorous types.
Bond Girl by Erin Duffy
7. Bond Girl by Erin Duffy
Did you know that trading floors are kept cold to balance out all the heat from the computers? Well, this is one gem that you’ll pick up when reading this 2012 debut. Described as ‘The Devil Wears Prada meets Wall Street’, the novel tells the story of university graduate Alex Garrett who bags a job for a Wall Street trading firm and discovers that it is far from easy being a woman in a male-dominated industry. This fun book is inspired by Duffy’s own career - she worked on Wall Street for a decade and was laid off from Merrill Lynch in 2008, before forging her writing career.
Believe. Build. Become by Debbie Wosskow OBE and Anna Jones
Believe. Build. Become by Debbie Wosskow OBE and Anna Jones
Penned by our AllBright founders, this is a must-read manual for any woman in business. Each chapter is a mine of information and advice on the skills and mindset needed to be a successful leader. Debbie and Anna also share their journeys - from serial entrepreneurship for Debbie, to CEO at Hearst for Anna - and how they converged when they met at a party in 2015 which led to the creation of AllBright.