Personal Days: A Novel (Paperback)

by Ed Park (Author)
Key Phrases: distress frog, oat bars, Original Jack, The Jilliad, Big Sal (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Park's warm and winning fiction debut is narrated by a collective we of youngish Manhattan office grunts who watch in helpless horror as their company keeps shrinking, taking their private world of in-jokes and nicknames along with it. The business itself remains opaque, but who eats lunch with whom, which of the two nearby Starbucks is the good Starbucks, and whose desk knickknacks have the richest iconography become abundantly clear. What starts out feeling like a cutesy set of riffs evolves into such a deft, familiar intimacy that when the next round of layoffs begins in earnest, the reader is just as disconcerted as the characters. As office survivors Lizzie, Jonah, Pru, Crease, Lars and Jason II try to figure out who's next to get the axe, mysterious clues point to a conspiracy that may involve one or more of the survivors. By the time answers arrive, Park—former Voice Literary Supplement editor, a founding editor of the Believer and the creator of the e-zine the New York Ghost—has built the tension masterfully. Echoing elements from Ferris's debut smash, Then We Came to the End, Park may have written the first cubicle cozy. (May)
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From The New Yorker
This comic and creepy début novel takes place in a Manhattan office depopulated by "the Firings," where one can "wander vast tracts of lunar workscape before seeing a window." The downsized staff huddle like the crew of a doomed spaceship, picked off one by one by an invisible predator. Crippled by computer crashes (one worker suggests that the machines are "trying to tell us about the limits of the human"), the survivors eddy in a spiritual inertia; when one of them is banished to "Siberia"—a lone desk on another floor—no one can muster the energy even to reply to her increasingly anguished e-mails, until, one day, she is simply no longer there. Park transforms the banal into the eerie, rendering ominous the familiar request "Does anyone want anything from the outside world?"
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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (May 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812978579
• ISBN-13: 978-0812978575
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #178,749 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Office meets Office Space in a book, June 4, 2008

By	SSLYBY - See all my reviews

Personal Days is both funny and clever - it can be enjoyed for its hilarious and familiar observations of contemporary office life absurdities and appreciated for Ed Park's witty writing style. It's the perfect literary companion to Dilbert, The Office, and Office Space.

The characters are sharply portrayed with satirical affection - reading the book was like starting a new job and meeting a new set of coworkers who could become one's friends or nemeses.

The plot is gripping and culminates in something rare in many of today's novels - an ending that is both satisfying and leaves one guessing.

I highly recommend Personal Days and look forward to more of Mr. Park's refreshing voice.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo!, June 3, 2008

By	A Reader (Lawrence, KS USA) - See all my reviews

I LOVE this book. At first I was reading it very quickly because it is so g-damn funny and is so fun to read. Then I read slower and slower until I was only allowing myself to read a few pages at a time because I really didn't want it to end. Just a brilliant piece of work--and not only are the sentences so good (jokes within jokes within jokes) but also the structure of the book is exciting and the overall movement of the plot is extremely interesting. It moves from a very light, funny, almost sitcom-like environment gradually to a very bleak, strange, lonely place, where each secure part is torn away, piece by piece, and a single last character is left, alone, calling out into what can only seen as apocolyptic gloom. Wow. My kind of book.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My opinion, June 3, 2008

By	Andy l (LA CA) - See all my reviews

Personal Days is a funny and sardonic read, and while the laughs come quickly, at times somewhat painfully, in a good way, there is real intelligence to this book. The characters seem to be dashed off at first glance, but quickly you find that they feel real and complete, or at least as real and complete as any of the people in real life that we get to know in the same way: through quirky episodes and odd monikers and annoying or endearing tics. PD is a quick read, full of laughs, but take your time and you'll be rewarded.

I don't write many reviews.