Why did Diane love this book?
As you can tell from my first two choices, I usually go for dark, disturbing fiction.
I love fiction that confronts me with the challenge of making sense of troubling circumstances and putting myself in another’s place, work that’s as complex and difficult as the world we live in. So maybe this novel qualifies in those terms because narrator Cara Romero surely has a lot of problems.
Faced now with unemployment and a job counselor, she has no idea how bureaucracy works and all she can do is answer standardized questions in her own digressive way. Cara’s 100% authentic voice made me fall in love with a novel that’s lighter in tone and more upbeat than what I usually choose.
When you listen to that voice – hoping her counselor does too – all Cara’s skills and best qualities shine through.
2 authors picked How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Write this down: Cara Romero wants to work.
Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life. Over the course of twelve sessions, Cara recounts her tempestuous love affairs, her alternately biting and loving relationships with her neighbor Lulu and her sister Angela, her struggles with debt, gentrification…