Literature sometimes takes indecipherable paths. Perhaps it is a search for untagged by the author on duty, or a desire to explore new languages in a world in which every term seems hackneyed, worn, manipulated towards post-truth ...
And in that intention walks the young writer Helen Phillips in her disturbing, dreamlike, unsettling narrative and, deep down, terribly lucid.
When we discover Josephine, we are unable to anticipate what will happen next. And that's one of the most rewarding aspects of this novel narrative intention. It is about going to the cinema without knowing very well what the film is about, daring to buy a book without reading the synopsis, just because the cover is striking, or because you sense that you are going to find something different.
And Helen Phillips is different, her way of writing and the background that emerges from this novel of hers is different.
Josephine accepts a new job with the illusion of someone who finally breaks the desperate chain of prolonged time without a job. That your performance is carried out in a kind of zulo where you only have to perform a repetitive mathematical task with which to nurture an insatiable Database is not the most rewarding, but it is what it is. Between those four walls without ventilation, without natural light, with the constant chanting of the ventilation system and a growing sense of alienation towards the transformation of Josephine into a kind of human algorithm, without a soul, processing information without apparent meaning.
A certain point Orwellian it governs the story, only that it is even more sinister on a personal level, distressing in the skin of the protagonist who sees her reality crumbling when her husband disappears at the same time that she feels unable to escape from that strange job. Behind the numbers, about data mining, Josephine wants to know something more than make sense, like a sudoku puzzle left half-way in which its final square may turn out to be a final algorithm about life, existence, power, politics. , the ultimate reality ...
A story full of creepy symbols full of nuances, where everyone can interpret profound meanings about our own nature within a civilization that, despite its historical intention to know, sinks as it approaches the highest level of knowledge.
You can now buy the novel The beautiful bureaucrat, the amazing new book by Helen Phillips, here: