Customer Reviews

The Anxiety of Everyday Objects

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This novel reads more smoothly, with better developed characters, and more intriguing plot and dilemmas than any other novel I've read from this genre, first novel or not. Thousands of women have walked (and limped) in Winona's shoes, but their tales are rarely told, and certainly never told with this much intellect, spice and sincerity.

With an astute eye for office politics, and a knack for the metaphysical, Sheehan has written a beguiling and quite idiosyncratic story of what it takes to survive as a working girl in New York. The narrative offers us a savvy glimpse into the life of Winona Bartlett, a twenty-something filmmaker, who is passing the time, and paying rent, by working as a secretary in the swanky and ritzy Manhattan law firm of Greko Mauster Crill, Where she has, at least, "an identity, the sanctity of identity in her normal work." When Sandy Spires, a blind, ambitious and devastatingly beautiful lawyer joins the firm, Winona is inexplicably drawn to her. Sandy befriends Winona, promotes her to office manager, and showers her with attention and affection. But Sandy has a secret, and Winona through her own naïve ambition, is unwittingly drawn into Sandy's clandestine activities.

Out of the office, Winona has to suffer her flighty and self obsessed sister Liz, who is constantly asking her to house sit, "do her bidding," and look after her dog Sniffles. She is also shielding attention from Rex, a cute young hotshot lawyer, who wants to "date" her while coping with her current boyfriend Jeremy, who wants her to go to a couple's conference for counseling. After she decides to break up with Jeremy, Sylvester, a savvy, older continental filmmaker, courts her with the promise to help her break into the industry. The plot twists and turns and Winona finds herself getting caught up in all sorts of experiences as she searches for integrity and tries to navigate through the frustrations of life.

Winona's film is going to be called The Anxiety of Everyday Objects and she wants the heroine of her film to be going about her business, seeing things, but things that are "magnified, imagined, or skewed - an outburst of her own anxiety." Is there a difference between what you see and what you hear, or are they incomparable as "an aria to a sun collapsing over a French Hill?" How we perceive each other, and what we look for in a person's character is at the heart of this delectably lively and spirited novel. Perhaps in the end, it isn't absolutely clear whether it is sight or blindness that produces happiness. Fans of "chic lit" are going to appreciate this work, along with anyone who has ever found themselves in the middle of the manipulations, and scheming affairs of office life. Mike Leonard May 04.

This book is ambitious, and though it doesn't quite live up to its own expectations, it's a great read.

Both a character sketch and a workplace mystery, *Anxiety* reminds you how dangerous it can be to take people at face value. Manipulation and office politics are treated with gravity and wit. An excellent and impressive first novel. I will definitely buy Sheehan's next book.

The beauty of The Anxiety of Everyday Objects is that it is a good
read on different levels - as an entertaining and suspenseful page turner, as well as an insightful exploration of the integrity of pursuing artistic (and other!) desires. Ms. Sheehan is well
regarded for her poetic prose and that, coupled with a significant
plot twist (one I'm trying hard not to give away),will prove most rewarding from the first page on.

Every once in a while I go through a reading drought. My shelves look uninspired and I'm tired of the same-old-same-old but not energetic enough to try something completely different. These droughts generally happen once a year or so, and last for a few weeks, and will always be ended by a phenomenal book. I picked this one up a few years ago on a work trip at an airport bookstore, and devoured it during my flight. The writing is divine, the characters are so real, and the story is wonderful. Highly recommended!

I loved this book. "Our" heroine, Winona, is all over the place when it comes to work (she has a Master's degree yet works in a secretarial position), men (they come and go, so to speak), and film (her secret passion). Winona does the "right thing" at work (a small law firm bordering on the brink of insolvency). She suffers through all of the unpleasantries associated with working for lawyers. At the same time, Winona has to indulge her completely self-absorbed (and whacko) sister. There is so much in this novel, and the writing is so good, you just have to read it. You will be delighted.

Aurelie Sheehan is a magnificent storyteller and she writes like a dream. The Anxiety of Everyday Objects could be a bright, crisp read--a series of madcap adventures provides a smart page-turning pace--but I took my time. It's one of those books that packs sentence-by-sentence delights driven by a miraculous sense of language.

I picked this book up while browsing. I flipped through a few pages, liked the crisp writing, flipped again, and still liked the writing. But, much to my disappointment, when I tried to read the book straight through, I found the overall plot to be surprisingly off. Aurelie can clearly frame beautiful sentences, but what happens in the book is helter-skelter (at best), and the secondary characters seem unknowable.

Well-written, intriguing unraveling of the perfect legal secretary from Connecticut. Really good. I stayed up late reading it and I don't regret it. Now, that is a successful book IMHO!

Winona Bartlett is a wannabe film-maker living in New York City. Although she doesn't own a camera, she spends lots of time imagining her first film, to be called "The Anxiety of Everyday Objects," a plotless piece that will illustrate the ways in which we continually misperceive the world around us, for example when we misread a sign that says "Turn ahead" as "Turn ahead." Yet while Winona's artistic aspirations run to the philosophical and ponderous, her day-to-day life is, well, predictably boring. She works as a secretary in a small law firm where she obsessed about making coffee that is just the right strength for her boss, she lives alone with her cat Fruit Bat, she is bossed around by her self-centered older sister, and she dates a series of unsuitable men. Things start to change when her firm hires Sandy Spires, a mysterious, sophisticated blind lawyer to help with a lawsuit they're working on. Sandy shakes up the firm, but in the end, and frankly as any even somewhat astute reader could have guessed--Sandy turns out not to be who she seems, and the revelation of this leads to a series of events that set Winona on a much more promising course. The book ends with the kind of explain-it-all scene one sees in TV detective shows, as where Monk exclaims "Here's what happened."