false 2026701 0812978579 9780812978575 498 174 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1199552036m/2026701.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2026701.Personal_Days_A_Novel 456432 Ed Park 516 179 5 0 false Mon Jun 22 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jun 09 05:32:10 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 25 11:06:51 -0700 2009
But, I really didn't find any punches to pull anyway, because I loved Personal Days (dunno if there was bias involved), and I've never even worked in a normal office. At times, the book does feel a bit like an author's quintessential "first book" in that it is constantly experimenting and doing things differently (each third of the book is extremely different from the other two) but it pretty much always works.

The first section of the book, all in first person plural of all things, is basically a series of humorous vignettes, without any real sense of a plot other than a general sense of foreboding. It's very funny, perfectly encapsulates New York (the Good Starbucks and the Bad Starbucks, for example), and is easy to read in small doses. That first section kind of flies by without feeling like a lot has gotten done, but it's very enjoyable. The second section is the most conventional (although the chapters are structured like an outline), and it's here that one realizes how the short bits in the first part really established the characters, and a plot starts to develop, if seemingly lazily. Then it's in the third section (the rambling section written in first person, as one paragraph, without periods, for spoilery reasons) that it suddenly becomes clear that there was a plot all along, and we suddenly realize that we were reading a mystery.

That last section should probably be read in one sitting, if possible, and while I was skeptical at its start, it sucked me in very quickly. (Stream of consciousness works wonderfully when it's funny.) It's a great reveal that makes one realize, just in the third act, that they were reading a well-scripted mystery.

I'm sure that those who've led normal lives of office drudgery (as opposed to my work-at-home drudgery, which might be worse) will appreciate Personal Days even more than I did.]]>