A new crop of novels are exploring work culture and burnout – yet for many, the office feels like a distant memory. In the light of coronavirus, where will this literature go next?
What has become of the office? Its small, mundane daily rituals, its smells – of over-boiled coffee, synthetic fabrics, other people’s perfume – the low hum of phone conversations and the whirring of the printer. To those of us who are still working from home, it feels like a faraway place, a half-forgotten memory, and to those who have returned it is utterly transformed: masked, distanced, hushed.
It’s a strange time to be appraising the workplace novel. Will things return to how they were before, or will we look back on our time of working long, gruelling hours in the office with relief, or even nostalgia? I wonder if books set in offices will make us wistful about some aspects of pre-pandemic life or if, instead, these narratives will act as a warning against returning to a working culture that felt, to many of us, unreliable and unstable.
