A review by fiendfull
Hard Copy by Fien Veldman

3.0

Hard Copy is a novel about a young woman who makes friends with a printer, only to be separated from it. A customer service assistant at a startup spends her days printing in a little room, and talking to the printer. Unfortunately, her colleagues can hear these conversations, and she is placed on leave for burnout, where she is separated from her printer, and tries to look for purpose to her life. 

 

This is the kind of book where the concept—"girl meets printer"—draws you in, and it does deliver on this, with a story of a protagonist who is obsessed with her work printer to give meaning to her tedious job, and a section that is from the perspective of the printer. The non-printer-narrated parts also explore her childhood in a working class area and how she might have come to be the anxious, stress-allergic person that she now is. There's a commentary on the modern world of work and the impact of class and status upon this that runs through the novel, with the absurd printer elements taking this in a slightly different direction to other books about an anxious narrator doing a tedious job. 

 

Though I enjoyed reading Hard Copy, I found the ending was a bit disappointing, and generally I feel like the book, and especially the fourth section which comes after the part narrated by the printer, could've been much weirder, as the blurb felt like it was going to be. I'm sure some people will find the printer element weird enough, but for me, I felt like it could've delved deeper, and also maybe deconstructed the anxious narrator a bit more. Nonetheless, this sits nicely amongst absurd workplace novels that shine a light to modern life and books about millennials falling apart, so fans of those will probably enjoy it.