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Temp, The
We all know how it first you go to School, then you go to University, and then you enter Real Life. And that's the important bit. Real Life is about achievement, recognition, choices. It's about a boss who trusts you, a wardrobe that suits you, friends who support you and a relationship that fulfils you. It`s a mobile phone, an expense account, a company car and a place to park it. Happily Ever After.
Unforunately, Real Life isn't working that way for The Temp. She's managed the university bit, but the job, the dough and the happily-ever-after seem harder than anybody ever told her. Living in Stockwell while she moves through a series of jobs ranging from the horrifying mindless to the bemusingly witless to the simply extraordinary, she realises that something isn't right.
Who cares about a boss who trusts you? She'd settle for a boss who knows her name. This can't be Real Life, can it?
Building on the success of her INDEPENDENT column, Serena Mackesy has created a wonderfully witty, acerbic exposé of office anthropology and a genuinely moving story about the early-twenties doldrums.
Unforunately, Real Life isn't working that way for The Temp. She's managed the university bit, but the job, the dough and the happily-ever-after seem harder than anybody ever told her. Living in Stockwell while she moves through a series of jobs ranging from the horrifying mindless to the bemusingly witless to the simply extraordinary, she realises that something isn't right.
Who cares about a boss who trusts you? She'd settle for a boss who knows her name. This can't be Real Life, can it?
Building on the success of her INDEPENDENT column, Serena Mackesy has created a wonderfully witty, acerbic exposé of office anthropology and a genuinely moving story about the early-twenties doldrums.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published October 7, 1999
4 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Serena Mackesy
8 books12 followersSerena Mackesy is a British novelist, author of four novels under her own name and several bestselling psychological crime novels under her pseudonym, Alex Marwood. She is the granddaughter on her mother's side of the novelist Margaret Kennedy and on her father's side of the novelist romantic novelist Leonora Starr/Dorothy Rivers. She grew up in Oxford, and graduated in English Literature from the Univeristy of London. She lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
September 22, 2017
When I was first out of University, I took on several temporary jobs to make ends meet. Whilst this is a common job for many, it’s a working practice very rarely touched upon in chick-lit novels. Whilst many of the genre’s characters only seem to be at work temporarily and have time for meeting friends for lunch at any and all times of the day, the transient nature of work isn’t touched upon.
In this aspect, Serena Mackesy’s “The Temp” comes a little closer to reality than many chick-lit novels. The title character still lives in a shared house with friends from her University days and is working a series of short-term jobs just to pay the bills, which appears to be beyond a couple of her flatmates, one of whom is her boyfriend, Matt. As if being ignored at work wasn’t bad enough, she is looked down on at home by Tania, who is “something in the City” and further depressed by Donna, who is a social worker and has an even worse job than The Temp.
For a large part of the book, this is a highly realistic look at everyday life for many. The Temp goes through a lot of jobs, meeting people with foibles and quirks along the way. She’s looked down upon by any number of people, struggles to make the rent, can’t find a seat on the Northern Line and ends up dealing with an overfilled dustbin in the early hours of the morning because no-one else in the house had thought to do it. There is much here which is horribly familiar to many of us.
The characters are very well written, too. They are all distinct and whilst they are broadly painted into stereotypes, they differ enough that you don’t get the characters mixed up with each other as can often happen. There is the upper-class wannabe who can get a little confused with the actual upper class character, but by and large you can tell which one is which by the way they speak and act and what they talk about. They also all have differing yet frequently unsatisfactory lives, and the way they talk about them, as well as the way they talk also adds a further touch of reality frequently missing from the genre.
The problem I had with the book is that the reality only goes so far and there is a huge change to the tone and the pace of the novel quite late on. Whilst the events that lead up to things are realistic and well portrayed and very sympathetically handled, what happens afterwards does require a little suspension of disbelief in the way it comes together. This splits the book into two distinct parts, one where the gritty realism of the story makes it stand out and one where reality takes a back seat and it turns into a cliché, albeit with slightly more realistic characters than many genre novels.
I really wanted to like “The Temp” and for large portions of it, I really do. But the switch into a standard genre novel always feels like a let-down, as if the author didn’t quite know how to finish and had to take inspiration from other chick-lit novels to make sure everything was tied up nicely in a way chick-lit novels always do and real life rarely achieves. This is doubly disappointing after the slice of real life that was the early part of the novel and how refreshing a change that felt for so long.
Whilst this is a decent enough novel to read while on your daily commute or for a beach read, it’s not one to be read over and over, as the later stages of it are so off-putting.
In this aspect, Serena Mackesy’s “The Temp” comes a little closer to reality than many chick-lit novels. The title character still lives in a shared house with friends from her University days and is working a series of short-term jobs just to pay the bills, which appears to be beyond a couple of her flatmates, one of whom is her boyfriend, Matt. As if being ignored at work wasn’t bad enough, she is looked down on at home by Tania, who is “something in the City” and further depressed by Donna, who is a social worker and has an even worse job than The Temp.
For a large part of the book, this is a highly realistic look at everyday life for many. The Temp goes through a lot of jobs, meeting people with foibles and quirks along the way. She’s looked down upon by any number of people, struggles to make the rent, can’t find a seat on the Northern Line and ends up dealing with an overfilled dustbin in the early hours of the morning because no-one else in the house had thought to do it. There is much here which is horribly familiar to many of us.
The characters are very well written, too. They are all distinct and whilst they are broadly painted into stereotypes, they differ enough that you don’t get the characters mixed up with each other as can often happen. There is the upper-class wannabe who can get a little confused with the actual upper class character, but by and large you can tell which one is which by the way they speak and act and what they talk about. They also all have differing yet frequently unsatisfactory lives, and the way they talk about them, as well as the way they talk also adds a further touch of reality frequently missing from the genre.
The problem I had with the book is that the reality only goes so far and there is a huge change to the tone and the pace of the novel quite late on. Whilst the events that lead up to things are realistic and well portrayed and very sympathetically handled, what happens afterwards does require a little suspension of disbelief in the way it comes together. This splits the book into two distinct parts, one where the gritty realism of the story makes it stand out and one where reality takes a back seat and it turns into a cliché, albeit with slightly more realistic characters than many genre novels.
I really wanted to like “The Temp” and for large portions of it, I really do. But the switch into a standard genre novel always feels like a let-down, as if the author didn’t quite know how to finish and had to take inspiration from other chick-lit novels to make sure everything was tied up nicely in a way chick-lit novels always do and real life rarely achieves. This is doubly disappointing after the slice of real life that was the early part of the novel and how refreshing a change that felt for so long.
Whilst this is a decent enough novel to read while on your daily commute or for a beach read, it’s not one to be read over and over, as the later stages of it are so off-putting.
January 19, 2012
Standard fare. Woman in her 20s sorts her romantic and professional life out. Standard supporting cast of boozers and no-hopers who also all seem to sort themselves out. Quelle surprise. Only difference being that the mid-book crisi is a bit more serious than most. Rated MA for adult themes, sexual references, coarse language and drug use. 2.5/5
November 20, 2018
This is really smart and funny book. I kinda knew how it would end (and the gypsy part was pretty annoying and really unnecessary) but there's just so much hilarious stuff here, that I have to give this four stars (plus the name thing was pretty neat).
September 7, 2012
I expected some fun or any giggling which non in this book. It's just ok book for me, sorry.
December 20, 2022
I really enjoyed this book!
I picked it up because it looked light hearted and fun and refreshing. And it totally lived up to my expectations.
The book follows a girl who, despite graduating uni, cannot get a job and is forced into temping for a good 6 months or so. The book follows her journey until she eventually lands a job. But there are many other side stories along the way - romance, adultery, fame, crime etc. There are not many characters but they all have something going on - their own little characters thought about and given life (except Craig - but then everyone knows a Craig).
The grammar and punctuation is nearly spot on - I spotted a 'to' which should have been a 'too' and an extra 'a' in a sentence, but otherwise it's perfect.
Surprisingly I don't think I knew the main character's name for most of the book. There's a part when she's in the office and a guy asks her name and she responds 'most people call me Sasha' or something along those lines and I thought - wait, is she lying? Is her name Sasha? And it was! I just don't know if her friends ever used her name in dialogue.
Some of the main characters are Scottish and I did like it when Mackesy wrote in Scottish dialect to really get this across - very good.
If you're looking for a lighthearted read that's a little different from the norm I would certainly recommend this book. And I would definitely read more Serena Mackesy :-)
I picked it up because it looked light hearted and fun and refreshing. And it totally lived up to my expectations.
The book follows a girl who, despite graduating uni, cannot get a job and is forced into temping for a good 6 months or so. The book follows her journey until she eventually lands a job. But there are many other side stories along the way - romance, adultery, fame, crime etc. There are not many characters but they all have something going on - their own little characters thought about and given life (except Craig - but then everyone knows a Craig).
The grammar and punctuation is nearly spot on - I spotted a 'to' which should have been a 'too' and an extra 'a' in a sentence, but otherwise it's perfect.
Surprisingly I don't think I knew the main character's name for most of the book. There's a part when she's in the office and a guy asks her name and she responds 'most people call me Sasha' or something along those lines and I thought - wait, is she lying? Is her name Sasha? And it was! I just don't know if her friends ever used her name in dialogue.
Some of the main characters are Scottish and I did like it when Mackesy wrote in Scottish dialect to really get this across - very good.
If you're looking for a lighthearted read that's a little different from the norm I would certainly recommend this book. And I would definitely read more Serena Mackesy :-)
October 28, 2021
A book you might remember being heavily advertised on the tube about 20 years ago.
A good, realistic account of life temping. It also has two subplots, one of which is very good and topical for the me too generation and another which is lame.
One of the things this novel gets right though is after it wraps up one of the subplots and could've been the finale, there is another act. This turns out to be one of the best temping tales and is not simply an epilogue.
A good, realistic account of life temping. It also has two subplots, one of which is very good and topical for the me too generation and another which is lame.
One of the things this novel gets right though is after it wraps up one of the subplots and could've been the finale, there is another act. This turns out to be one of the best temping tales and is not simply an epilogue.
September 23, 2020
Read this when I was an invisible temp too, all rang true.
January 10, 2021
Was expecting a similar book to Virtue but nowhere near as funny or concise. Just a meandering look at a dull life led in the nineties. 🤷🏼♀️
December 20, 2024
This is a light hearted, laugh out loud romcom about a 20 something woman, who is working as a temp, and her crappy life. It's really easy to read and perfect for a day on the beach or by the pool.
August 2, 2015
I do like a 'candy floss' book every now and again, but this was candy floss gone wrong. The parts about temp life were funny and enjoyable, but the other parts, especially parts which touched on serious subjects (I won't say what because I don't want to spoil anything) were either 'meh' or just didn't fit in with the lighthearted feel of the rest of the book.
January 16, 2017
I wish I could be less middle-of-the-road with my ratings. This was easy to read, except for all the UK slang I don't know, but the book was quite meandering, the narrator's life interspersed with lots of work situations that we never came back to again (she's a temp, after all). The ending had a nice twist to it, but on the whole, nothing makes me want to recommend this book to anyone else.
July 17, 2011
Superior chicklit written by a woman who seems to understand the sheer, grinding misery of office life. Populated with some realistic and non-glamorous characters - although also with an ex-boy-band member, which is not something most of us have in our life.
August 9, 2016
I read The Temp many years ago and really enjoyed it. An extremely funny and well-observed novel, I have been a temp in the past and this is a brilliant portrayal of temp life and the office culture.
October 29, 2011
For those readers who are fans of the "Shopaholic" series of books you will enjoy this book.
September 2, 2011
Brilliant, funny and romantic - if you like Four Weddings and Notting Hill, you'll enjoy this. Made me all choked up.
January 23, 2016
Leuk, ontspannend boek.
June 28, 2008
Read it - you won't be disappointed :-)
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews