Personal Days
 2008 Random House book jacket | |
| Author | Ed Park |
|---|---|
| Subject | Workplace humor |
| Genre | Satire, Literary fiction |
| Set in | New York City |
| Publisher | Random House, New York., Jonathan Cape and Vintage Books, London, |
| Publication date | 2008, 2009 |
| Publication place | United States, United Kingdom. |
| Media type | Print, eBook |
| Pages | 241 |
| Awards | 2008 shortlisted for First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. 2009 finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. |
| ISBN | 9780812978575 |
| OCLC | 173659698 |
| Website | Official website |
Personal Days is the first novel written by Ed Park. It was published by Random House in 2008. The novel satirizes the work life of office cubicle employees, including the specter of getting laid off or surviving.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Plot
[edit]This novel is about a group of eight office workers in New York City as their company has a financial crisis. The first part of the story is told from the perspective of these eight employees, who act as a collective narrator. With humor, the novel depicts their focused attempts to cope with the threat of job loss that is ever present, while at the same time, most of them dislike their jobs.[4]
Connections
[edit]According to McClatchy News, upon its release this book was compared to Joshua Ferris' notable novel, Then We Came to the End. Both novels apply a first-person plural narrator to demonstrate the absurd nature of office life. Ferris' book was published six months before Park's. Personal Days, "is a little leaner, a little more antic, even a little more experimental, as evidenced by the final section of the novel."[4] McClatchy News also says that Thomas Ligotti's book, My Work is Not Yet Done has the opposite, a sinister and dark plot.[4]
Kirkus Reviews alludes to the films Office Space and Mr. Brooks in its review of this novel.[3]
Awards
[edit]in the 2008 this novel was shortlisted for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction.[7] This book was also a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award in 2009.[8]
Reception
[edit]Mark Servas of The New York Times says that "Unmoored from the details of their daily toil, the large cast becomes hard to differentiate throughout the first two-thirds of the book." Servas also says that "Park has written what one of his characters calls "a layoff narrative" for our times... We need as many as we can get right now."[1]
Kirkus Reviews says that "Park is very good at capturing the frustrations, fears and small pleasures flourishing amid the cubicles... [However,] he undermines this accomplishment, though, when he gives his story a villain—an evil madman, no less—rather than letting the bad guy be the office itself.[3]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 Mark Sarvas. "Cubicle Rats". The New York Times. 29 June 2008.
- ↑ Colleen Lye (2015). "Unmarked Character and the "Rise of Asia": Ed Park's Personal Days". Verge: Studies in Global Asias. 1: 230. doi:10.5749/vergstudglobasia.1.1.0230. JSTOR 10.5749/vergstudglobasia.1.1.0230.
- 1 2 3 Review: "Personal Days". Kirkus Reviews. March 15, 2008.
- 1 2 3 4 "Book Pub Takes a 'Personal Day'." McClatchy - Tribune Business News, 07 May 2009, ProQuest 455994622. Web. 15 Aug. 2025.
- ↑ Francesca Segal. Well, it's not like this in The Archers. The Guardian. March 22, 2008.
- ↑ Beck, Michaela. "The Post-Postmodern Afterlife of the American Novel: 'Resurrecting' the Novel-as-Archive in Anne Valente's Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down (2016) and Ed Park's Personal Days (2008)" Aftermath: The Fall and the Rise after the Event. Ed. Robert Kusek, Beata Piatek, and Wojciech Szymanski. Jagiellonian University Press, 2022. 305–318. Print.
- ↑ "2008 First Novel Prize". The Center for Fiction. Archived from the original on October 26, 2020. Retrieved August 15, 2025.
- ↑ "List of PEN /Hemingway Winners". The Hemingway Society. The Ernest Hemingway Foundation. 2009. Retrieved August 15, 2025.
Further reading
[edit]- Park, Ed. "Like Cormac McCarthy, but Funny". Believer (magazine). March 2003.
External links
[edit]- Official website
- ISBN 978-0-8129-7857-5
- "Ed Park's Secret History". Publishers Weekly. 2023.
- Personal Days | Ed Park | Talks at Google. Video. YouTube