The Brainstorm
Jenny Turner Jonathan Cape, 192pp, £12.99
ISBN 0224078046
We are now used to the email etiquette and coffee culture of office politics, but Jenny Turner's novel takes the reader back to its modern roots. The setting is a newspaper office in the 1990s, as the papers exchange Fleet Street for glassy towers on the banks of the Thames and Starbucks creeps on to the UK street corner.
Our protagonist is Lorna, the deputy editor of a newspaper "brainy section" supplement. Her colleagues span from the bolshy and crass Julie, to the socially and professionally hungry Miranda – the type whose City boyfriend buys her a web domain for her birthday. Although Lorna faithfully follows workplace routine, she has a sense that this is not quite what her life was meant to be. And as events in the office unfold, often via the email inbox, Lorna’s sense of disorientation becomes ever more pronounced.
Turner, a writer and journalist herself, faithfully portrays the dynamics of a media environment, often to comic effect. The characters conform to strict, if slightly wooden, stereotypes, but through Lorna the reader is able to empathise with the struggle against, and need to, participate in superficial exchanges. As a light read, Turner’s debut novel succeeds; for a funnier antidote to the workplace, try The Office.
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