Interesting concept that didn’t completely hit for me, due to pacing and overwriting.

What begins as workplace drama showcasing white micro aggressions at a massively white majority workplace. Slowly—excruciatingly so, sometimes—it shifts into a satirical metaphor that, along with the epilogue, firmly rooted this as a 3 star rather than 2 star rating. The last bit of the book is really, really good.

This took a long time to develop a plot and was very heavy handed in its very granular on the workplace interactions front, so much so that even the nibble of a plot you get (at about 25% in) was almost enough for me to call it a day. If you can dig through the spinning wheels though, there is some interesting things going on; in the back quarter of the novel, especially. I don’t know how many people will make it there though. What appears to be the main subject matter discussed are the white space dynamics, and that kind of lulls you into thinking you know what this is going to be.

But then the “weird” shit starts happening. And it does all come together.

However, I’m not entirely convinced this wouldn’t have made a much better, more intense, short story or novella. I’m not sure it justifies the page count despite the plot structuring. I think everything about it might have been punchier and very little lost had it been reworked. There were several dnf moments I had to claw through. No matter what the pay off is like at the end, aspects of it clearly didn’t work for me.

I have a feeling this will be a pretty polarizing book due to that. Couldn’t get through it—love it to bits. You’ll find me somewhere in the middle. Glad I read it. But unable to get over how puffed up it felt.