A debut collection full of biting satire. Evana Belich is a New Zealand author who has won several awards for her short stories. She's held various jobs, as a trade union official and employment relations officer, roles which have clearly informed her fiction. How to Get Fired, Belich's first published collection, comprises 16 stories, many linked by reappearing characters. The main focus of Evana Belich's fiction is on workplace relations – crappy jobs, ambitious bosses, dubious productivity gains, vacuous motivational mantras etc. etc. She also writes about strained friendships and difficult families. The tone is acerbically comic and ruthlessly observational. No one escapes this author's steely gaze. Belich writes about modern life as it really is – crowded with so much cognitive junk. There are sales targets for useless products to be met, the emotional labour involved in keeping bosses happy, and explosive Christmases where years of repressed stress come to the fore. If you have enjoyed quirky workplace fiction such as Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job, by Kikuko Tsumura and Diary of a Void by Emi Yagi, then you will love How to Get Fired. How to Get Fired, by Elana Belich. Published by Penguin. $32.99 Review by Chris Saliba Comments are closed.
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