Mary’s Pick of the Week: I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue

Office politics are the subject of Natalie Sue’s debut dramedy novel, I Hope This Finds You Well.  Jolene works at the corporate offices of a big box store, Supershops.  Her desperate loneliness is as redolent as the smell of burnt popcorn in the staff room microwave.  It is in fact, a smell that kicks off the action.  

She cannot relate to any of her colleagues and feels out of sync with everyone; channeling her social frustration, she adds nasty postscripts in white text to the bottom of all her emails and one day forgets to change the text color when calling out Caitlin for reheating her smelly trout soup in the communal microwave.  Immediately called into her loathsome boss’s office-she’s reprimanded and forced to endure weekly sensitivity training with the new adorable and off-limits human resources guy, Cliff.  In addition to the training, Jolene’s computer has been retrofitted with new security software, designed to keep her out of trouble.  Unfortunately, something goes wrong and Jolene can suddenly read all direct messages and emails for the entire office.  She decides to use much of this new found information to become an invaluable teammate, simultaneously connecting personally with her coworkers and increasing her professional productivity in the face of impending layoffs.  

When forced to have interactions with other humans, Jolene evolves to understand that it’s important to her survival and goes from faking it to needing it.  Sue excels in crafting scenes to viscerally describe her discomfort and her home life isn’t much better.  She rents an apartment that has seen better days and keeps it littered with empty liquor bottles and take-out containers.  A similarly lonely 12-year-old neighbor named Miley acts almost as an embodiment of her young self and offers acerbic commentaries on Jolene’s life.  Miley has given Jolene a gift of her first attempt at crochet and Jolene takes the opportunity to advise her to make meaningful connections with her peers: 

“There’s a hint of hardness in her (Miley’s) eyes.  There’s no way to stop the world from getting to her.  “Well, to me your crochet is charming, and my actual point is that anyone would be lucky to have a thoughtful friend like you.  Take it from me; it’s better to be a little picky and hold out for real friends, ‘cause the fake friends can crush you.” “But who wants to be that picky?” She leans in conspiringly, the tang of soda on her breath, in the orange on her lips.  “Now that you’re old, aren’t you, like, allowed to do whatever you want without asking but you never do.  It’s like you’ve grounded yourself”(246).

Natalie Sue has cited the graphic novelist Allie Brosh as an influence in her writing, claiming that her charming observational skills showcased in Solutions and Other Problems and Hyperbole and a Half inspired some of the humorous and sweet vignettes that take place in I Hope This Finds You Well.  While office politics can be stressful, never have they been so funny and satisfyingly resolved.