A young wife's new job pits her against the unfeeling machinations of
the universe in this dazzling first novel Ursula K. Le Guin hails as
"funny, sad, scary, beautiful. I love it."
In a windowless building in a remote part of town, the newly employed
Josephine inputs an endless string of numbers into something known only
as The Database. After a long period of joblessness, she's not inclined
to question her fortune, but as the days inch by and the files stack up,
Josephine feels increasingly anxious in her surroundings-the office's
scarred, pinkish walls take on a living quality, the drone of keyboards
echo eerily down the long halls. When one evening her husband, Joseph,
disappears and then returns, offering no explanation as to his
whereabouts, her creeping unease shifts decidedly to dread. As other
strange events build to a crescendo, the haunting truth about
Josephine's work begins to take shape in her mind, even as something
powerful is gathering its own form within her. She realizes that in
order to save those she holds most dear, she must penetrate an
institution whose tentacles seem to extend to every corner of the city
and beyond. Both chilling and poignant, The Beautiful Bureaucrat is a
novel of rare restraint and imagination. With it, Helen Phillips enters
the company of Murakami, Bender, and Atwood as she twists the world we
know and shows it back to us full of meaning and wonder-luminous and
new.
