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A review by booitsnathalie
The Employees by Olga Ravn
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
A frustratingly vague but often haunting epistolary short story. I wasn't anticipating it to hew so closely to videogame emails and SCP entries, but I'll give it credit for being thematically richer than most of the shockbait horror it structurally parallels.
Ideas about the bodies of dehumanized (in more ways than one) workers in a future capitalist state are woven in without the didactic brutality so much contemporary scifi relies on. Characters cannot see outside the demands of the company anymore than readers can materialize the absent interviewer. Both are invisible absolutes, acknowledged but dismissed because who has time when you're working 12 hour shifts (to say nothing or the cosmic horror leaking from this cargo...).
I felt rather listless by the end of this. Even with the introduction of an honest to god plot in the third act it retains the abstract, nonlinear structure (it was not surprising to learn the author is primarily a poet). Certain passages were striking enough to overcome the otherwise formless collage of interviews, but I am glad it was only a scarce 125 pages.
Ideas about the bodies of dehumanized (in more ways than one) workers in a future capitalist state are woven in without the didactic brutality so much contemporary scifi relies on. Characters cannot see outside the demands of the company anymore than readers can materialize the absent interviewer. Both are invisible absolutes, acknowledged but dismissed because who has time when you're working 12 hour shifts (to say nothing or the cosmic horror leaking from this cargo...).
I felt rather listless by the end of this. Even with the introduction of an honest to god plot in the third act it retains the abstract, nonlinear structure (it was not surprising to learn the author is primarily a poet). Certain passages were striking enough to overcome the otherwise formless collage of interviews, but I am glad it was only a scarce 125 pages.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder
Minor: Suicidal thoughts