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Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Go to university, get a degree they tell you, and a successful, happy future will be yours. So how has she wound up living with a traffic warden and working in office hell?
As her days fill with low-paid office work and her boyfriend abandons ambition, a young woman believes there must be an apocalypse on the horizon and hatches a dramatic plan to escape the life she picked by mistake.
A dark, comic, heart-breaking novel about the road to discovering that life rarely happens as we expect.
As her days fill with low-paid office work and her boyfriend abandons ambition, a young woman believes there must be an apocalypse on the horizon and hatches a dramatic plan to escape the life she picked by mistake.
A dark, comic, heart-breaking novel about the road to discovering that life rarely happens as we expect.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 16, 2014
2 people are currently reading
1542 people want to read
About the author
Alice Furse
2 books16 followersGrew up in Kent but now live in London... studied English Lit and Creative Writing at uni and went on to do an MA in The Contemporary Novel. Since then I've worked as a receptionist, a croupier, and now I'm the Press Officer for a sports radio station, which is a good laugh. My first novel, Everybody Knows this is Nowhere, was published in October.
Love cheese and wine and all that sort of thing.
Love cheese and wine and all that sort of thing.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
November 22, 2020
To my mind, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere deserves to be a buzz book, one of those everyone talks about on Twitter, that gets mentioned in magazine pieces under the assumption everyone's read it. It's certainly readable and topical enough. It combines an on-trend sense of millennial ennui with the aimless, plotless yet really rather pleasant feel of a 90s lifestyle novel, and the end result is a story that seems weirdly timeless even though most aspects of it are anchored in a particular time and place (near Brighton, and circa 2007/2008 - based on a mention of the smoking ban as a recent thing).
The narrator's never given a proper name. The only time she's referred to as anything is when her boyfriend, who similarly is only ever called 'the Traffic Warden', calls her 'Belly', a not entirely kind nickname. And nothing much happens. The narrator describes dull days in a data entry job, friendships and rivalries with colleagues, whatever's going on with her neighbours, the people she sees on the train platform every day... It might not sound like scintillating stuff, but it's so real - the voice feels completely natural - and so funny and it just feels true. Somehow, it adds up to one of the most compelling books I have read for ages. I just wanted to stick around in this character's world forever.
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is likely to have the greatest appeal for those who (like me) got a degree and had no idea what to do after that, and/or were disappointed with the trajectory of their life and career post-university. The narrator believes she is destined for something better, but what? She's frustrated with her boyfriend's lack of ambition, but can't imagine being without him. There's so many great touches here - the fact that her relationship isn't a stereotypical disappointing washout, but instead is shown as loving and supportive; the dialogue between her and the Traffic Warden; the portrayal of the office characters - their personalities make them recognisable 'types' for anyone who's ever worked in an office environment, but there's also the beautifully handled moment when the narrator realises they all have depths she knows nothing of, and that they probably look at her in exactly the same way she looks at them. Perhaps they were all terrified too.
The narrator's colleague Young Nathan (not to be confused with Big Nathan, the de facto boss) is trying to write a novel, and throughout the book he gives sporadic updates on how it's going. That novel is a mirror of this one, but we only ever hear the smallest snippets about its direction. How might that story pan out? What would this little world, these people look like from an angle only slightly different?
The narrator's never given a proper name. The only time she's referred to as anything is when her boyfriend, who similarly is only ever called 'the Traffic Warden', calls her 'Belly', a not entirely kind nickname. And nothing much happens. The narrator describes dull days in a data entry job, friendships and rivalries with colleagues, whatever's going on with her neighbours, the people she sees on the train platform every day... It might not sound like scintillating stuff, but it's so real - the voice feels completely natural - and so funny and it just feels true. Somehow, it adds up to one of the most compelling books I have read for ages. I just wanted to stick around in this character's world forever.
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is likely to have the greatest appeal for those who (like me) got a degree and had no idea what to do after that, and/or were disappointed with the trajectory of their life and career post-university. The narrator believes she is destined for something better, but what? She's frustrated with her boyfriend's lack of ambition, but can't imagine being without him. There's so many great touches here - the fact that her relationship isn't a stereotypical disappointing washout, but instead is shown as loving and supportive; the dialogue between her and the Traffic Warden; the portrayal of the office characters - their personalities make them recognisable 'types' for anyone who's ever worked in an office environment, but there's also the beautifully handled moment when the narrator realises they all have depths she knows nothing of, and that they probably look at her in exactly the same way she looks at them. Perhaps they were all terrified too.
The narrator's colleague Young Nathan (not to be confused with Big Nathan, the de facto boss) is trying to write a novel, and throughout the book he gives sporadic updates on how it's going. That novel is a mirror of this one, but we only ever hear the smallest snippets about its direction. How might that story pan out? What would this little world, these people look like from an angle only slightly different?
"What's it about?"There aren't enough books like this, but that's probably because making the mundane thrilling is so much harder than it looks. Alice Furse pulls it off with aplomb.
He sighed.
"Sorry, just curious."
"It's about working in an office," he said, scuffing the toes of his shoes on the ground.
"Does it help?" I asked.
He blew a smoke ring. "Well, it makes me feel we're not as insignificant as I know we really are, if that's what you mean."
"I'll take that. So tell me, what happens?"
"I don't know yet."
"You don't know?"
"I'm trying to decide between two options."
"What are they?"
We were silent for so long I wondered if he was going to speak.
"Well, either there'll be an apocalypse..."
"Right."
"Or nothing at all."
May 10, 2015
Some books tap into the malaise and misery of office culture in a way so specific to their time period that they rise above the general melee. Microserfs, by Douglas Coupland, did this in 1995. Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came To the End did the same thing in 2007, right before the financial crisis. Now, post-global banking meltdown, in the era of zero-hours contracts, Alice Furse has written Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, a mildly horrifying yet spot-on satire of the current state of graduate employment.
Read the rest of my review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2015...
Read the rest of my review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2015...
March 11, 2018
I loved this book. It reminded me of Mrs Bridge in that it was made up of poignantly funny little scenes of quiet desperation in a stifling world. I don't think I've read a more realistic novel, and it's a great achievement to make the banality of real life so compelling and affecting. A strength of the book, and also a weakness, for me, is the way it leaves things unsaid - what did she think and feel about this or that? It did make me ponder and imagine, but it also kept me at a slight distance from the character and the world through her eyes. But, yeah - really great.
September 12, 2020
Okay, so I am a little late to the party with this book. It was published in 2014 by Burning Eye Books, and has been sitting on my bookshelf for about two years (for shame), but it's fashionable to be late, right? Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is the debut novel by Alice Furse, about a nameless protagonist who struggles to find meaning in her hum drum post-graduate life.
I related to this book SO HARD. Like, I have literally lived the life of these characters. From post-graduate shitty mind numbing office jobs to relationships built on foundations of fire and passion that quickly crumble after that fire goes out. It was all a little too real at times, and I won't lie, at certain points I found myself frustrated with it. Largely because, well, nothing ever really happens - it isn't so much a story as it is a moment in time. Which is fine! More than fine, in fact, it is just not what I was expecting...
The tagline on the front cover is "A Girl. An Office. The Apocalypse" and the blurb on the back reads "As her days fill with low paid office work and her boyfriend abandons ambition, a young woman believes there must be an apocalypse on the horizon and hatches a dramatic plan to escape". Maybe, naively (?), I was expecting a wry take on an impending apocalypse, something akin to Seeking A Friend For The End of the World or Don McKellar's Last Night. But there is no apocalypse (other than, perhaps, a metaphorical one), the protagonist never mentions the imminent destruction of the world nor the salvation of the righteous (the word apocalypse is mentioned more times in this review thus far than it was in the book), and the protagonist does not in any way "hatch a dramatic plan to escape". I don't know, maybe I missed something, maybe I am just an idiot, or maybe I am just focusing on the wrong thing here, but I feel that the selling of the apocalypse angle does a massive disservice to what is otherwise a really bloody brilliant book.
To not only see the extraordinary in the couldn't-be-more-ordinary is one thing, but to bring it to life and make it sing the way Alice does is exceptional writing. There is a funny passage when the protagonist criticises Charles Bukowski's novel Women for being too unrealistic, and you could almost level the opposite criticism at Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. It perfectly captures the realities and the restlessness of being twenty-something and lost. At times it is uncomfortable. At times it is hilarious. At times you want to grab her boyfriend by the scruff of the neck and tell him to turn his bloody Xbox off and at times you realise that you were that boyfriend that was more interested in his Xbox than anything else (No? Just me then?). This really is a brilliant read and I highly recommend it. Just don't get too hung up on the whole apocalypse thing, like I did.
I related to this book SO HARD. Like, I have literally lived the life of these characters. From post-graduate shitty mind numbing office jobs to relationships built on foundations of fire and passion that quickly crumble after that fire goes out. It was all a little too real at times, and I won't lie, at certain points I found myself frustrated with it. Largely because, well, nothing ever really happens - it isn't so much a story as it is a moment in time. Which is fine! More than fine, in fact, it is just not what I was expecting...
The tagline on the front cover is "A Girl. An Office. The Apocalypse" and the blurb on the back reads "As her days fill with low paid office work and her boyfriend abandons ambition, a young woman believes there must be an apocalypse on the horizon and hatches a dramatic plan to escape". Maybe, naively (?), I was expecting a wry take on an impending apocalypse, something akin to Seeking A Friend For The End of the World or Don McKellar's Last Night. But there is no apocalypse (other than, perhaps, a metaphorical one), the protagonist never mentions the imminent destruction of the world nor the salvation of the righteous (the word apocalypse is mentioned more times in this review thus far than it was in the book), and the protagonist does not in any way "hatch a dramatic plan to escape". I don't know, maybe I missed something, maybe I am just an idiot, or maybe I am just focusing on the wrong thing here, but I feel that the selling of the apocalypse angle does a massive disservice to what is otherwise a really bloody brilliant book.
To not only see the extraordinary in the couldn't-be-more-ordinary is one thing, but to bring it to life and make it sing the way Alice does is exceptional writing. There is a funny passage when the protagonist criticises Charles Bukowski's novel Women for being too unrealistic, and you could almost level the opposite criticism at Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere. It perfectly captures the realities and the restlessness of being twenty-something and lost. At times it is uncomfortable. At times it is hilarious. At times you want to grab her boyfriend by the scruff of the neck and tell him to turn his bloody Xbox off and at times you realise that you were that boyfriend that was more interested in his Xbox than anything else (No? Just me then?). This really is a brilliant read and I highly recommend it. Just don't get too hung up on the whole apocalypse thing, like I did.
August 14, 2021
well, this didn't do what it said on the tin. the description said: "As her days fill with low-paid office work and her boyfriend abandons ambition, a young woman believes there must be an apocalypse on the horizon and hatches a dramatic plan to escape the life she picked by mistake." and that's just not what happened in the book at all. it's about a young woman who just finished university, but doesn't get her "dream job" right away (not that she knows what that might be). so she starts working in an office, doing monotone tasks. the book is also about her sad relationship with her indifferent, ambitionless boyfriend. but at no point ever does she believe there is an apocalypse on the horizon - there are just two or three throwaway scenes like, a bit of a storm is happening, and the protagonist thinks for one second something like 'oh what if that would be the apocalypse', and then moves on -, nor does she hatch any kind of dramatic plan to escape. this is one of those books where basically "nothing happens", it's just a quiet study of a person's life.
i'm still gonna give the book (a low) 3 stars though, because i thought it captured the feeling many people might get after they finished uni quite well, looking for your place in life, being afraid that you are stuck in a bad job etc., and that sad relationship between the woman and her boyfriend also was a little bit Too Real for me. i do feel very cheated though by the description.
i'm still gonna give the book (a low) 3 stars though, because i thought it captured the feeling many people might get after they finished uni quite well, looking for your place in life, being afraid that you are stuck in a bad job etc., and that sad relationship between the woman and her boyfriend also was a little bit Too Real for me. i do feel very cheated though by the description.
August 7, 2024
A descriptive novel of a women in her first job after university trying to find meaning in life. If you worked in an office in the 90's some of the observations will probably ring true. A slow story but readable.
July 15, 2021
Absolutely captured how I felt leaving uni! The absolute ennui and comedown - thankfully it got better
March 6, 2018
Totally relatable life ennui, I loved it.
February 12, 2014
I read Alice Furse's debut novel, Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, twice, and that's saying something because I very rarely read a book twice. I thoroughly enjoyed it both times, and that's really saying something.
"Sometimes I decided that there had to be another life out there, waiting for me to step into it like a new shoe. My life felt as if it didn't match me at all, as if I'd picked up the wrong one by accident."
The main character (whose name we never find out) has just graduated and not knowing how to get the job of her dreams, accepts a mind-numbing job in an office. Personally this is something I can relate to as I found myself in exactly the same position after university. The book is filled with all the little experiences of working in an office and Furse finds a way to make the endless mundane days at the office interesting.
"You love what you love and you believe what you believe."
Relationships are also explored in the novel, the most important being the one between the main character and her boyfriend, the Traffic Warden. They live in "the noisiest place in the universe" and embark on post-uni life together. Relationships between couples in the twenty-first century are changing; there are no longer any rules and it's not always easy to find your way. Which flaws can you accept as endearing, and which are unbearable?
"I loved the sharpness of the air in my mouth and the skeletal trees spread like veins on the clear sky."
Alice Furse has a way of looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary, writing about it and making it compelling in a way that I've rarely seen before. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is like a fly on the wall documentary, but in book form, and it's excellently done. She has a beautiful way with language and the book is packed with similes and descriptions, as well as fabulous one-liners. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is about to finish university (although make sure you're in a 'happy place' when you sit down to read it), anyone who has been frustrated after leaving university and anyone who is looking for a new, unique talent in the world of writing.
"Sometimes I decided that there had to be another life out there, waiting for me to step into it like a new shoe. My life felt as if it didn't match me at all, as if I'd picked up the wrong one by accident."
The main character (whose name we never find out) has just graduated and not knowing how to get the job of her dreams, accepts a mind-numbing job in an office. Personally this is something I can relate to as I found myself in exactly the same position after university. The book is filled with all the little experiences of working in an office and Furse finds a way to make the endless mundane days at the office interesting.
"You love what you love and you believe what you believe."
Relationships are also explored in the novel, the most important being the one between the main character and her boyfriend, the Traffic Warden. They live in "the noisiest place in the universe" and embark on post-uni life together. Relationships between couples in the twenty-first century are changing; there are no longer any rules and it's not always easy to find your way. Which flaws can you accept as endearing, and which are unbearable?
"I loved the sharpness of the air in my mouth and the skeletal trees spread like veins on the clear sky."
Alice Furse has a way of looking for the extraordinary in the ordinary, writing about it and making it compelling in a way that I've rarely seen before. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is like a fly on the wall documentary, but in book form, and it's excellently done. She has a beautiful way with language and the book is packed with similes and descriptions, as well as fabulous one-liners. I would highly recommend this to anyone who is about to finish university (although make sure you're in a 'happy place' when you sit down to read it), anyone who has been frustrated after leaving university and anyone who is looking for a new, unique talent in the world of writing.
September 5, 2017
The concept behind this book is fundamentally good - the nameless narrator has graduated from university, with all its promises of a nourishing and rewarding career path to follow, and found like many of us before, that employers like real life experience and have their pick of naive and eager graduates anyway. In a world that primarily (and incorrectly, in my view, but that's another story) weighs the benefit of further education purely in terms of its financial rewards afterwards, the fact that most graduates do not walk into anything approaching their dream job upon graduation, and the ennui that this creates, this is worth exploring.
Between this and the tedious ridiculousness of office life, this should amount to a rich seam of material with which to populate this book, but it never quite comes off.
The narrator herself is bland and neurotic and far too much of the novel is focused on her relationship with her boyfriend - a young man defined only as 'the Traffic Warden". He, also a graduate, accepts his lot in life more easily than the protagonist, counts the tickets he gives out of a day and plays on his Xbox on an evening. He's a drip, effectively and it's really hard to summon the energy to care about how the self-absorbed narrator who lives almost entirely in her head interacts with a simpleton. The book will try to make you care though; pages of 'the relationship stuff' abound, which sound better placed in a trashy chick lit novel.
It also lacks a real climax. She doesn't get her dream job, or go back to education, or run off with the vaguely more interesting bloke from work or her vaguely more interesting best friend, or kill herself through the boredom of it all. She just carries on. Which I suppose is what most people do in these situations, it just isn't very interesting to read about here.
Between this and the tedious ridiculousness of office life, this should amount to a rich seam of material with which to populate this book, but it never quite comes off.
The narrator herself is bland and neurotic and far too much of the novel is focused on her relationship with her boyfriend - a young man defined only as 'the Traffic Warden". He, also a graduate, accepts his lot in life more easily than the protagonist, counts the tickets he gives out of a day and plays on his Xbox on an evening. He's a drip, effectively and it's really hard to summon the energy to care about how the self-absorbed narrator who lives almost entirely in her head interacts with a simpleton. The book will try to make you care though; pages of 'the relationship stuff' abound, which sound better placed in a trashy chick lit novel.
It also lacks a real climax. She doesn't get her dream job, or go back to education, or run off with the vaguely more interesting bloke from work or her vaguely more interesting best friend, or kill herself through the boredom of it all. She just carries on. Which I suppose is what most people do in these situations, it just isn't very interesting to read about here.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 3, 2014
There is an assurance in the voice of this novel that lets you know from the off that you are in the safest of hands. Everybody Knows this is Nowhere belongs firmly at the centre of a new generation of literary writers whose origins can be found in the culture of 3AM and the Offbeats, a generation that seamlessly inhabit the digital and the real, and whose writing has a sparse lyricality that reflects the blurring of teh boundaries of internal and external expression. It's a group of writers that includes Jenni Fagan, Sam Mills, and Lee Rourke, and in this book has found a poetic and unsettling new voice.
June 21, 2024
Something about this book made me finish it in about two days, even though nothing really happens and it's quite boring, and way too focused on the main character's semi-toxic relationship. The book blurb is very misleading, but the writing is compelling and captures that feeling of not knowing what to do with one's life after university.
What i liked:
- The writing
- The atmosphere
- The weird tension
- Felt similar to Mellissa Broder's books which I really like
-
What I didn't like:
- The misleading description.
- I do think some kind of plot is needed. I can't give this 4 or 5 stars just for the vibes.
Random quotes ✨
"Sometimes I decided that there had to be another life out there, waiting for me to step into it like a new shoe. My life felt as if it didn't match me at all, as if I'd picked up the wrong one by accident. I'd arrived here by mistake, taken a wrong turning on the map." - p. 67
"Me too. But no, the truth about men is that I don't need one. I miss having sex sometimes, but I can't bear living with them. I love being independent. I sacrifice nothing, for nobody." - p. 187
"A friend of mine had a baby when she was eighteen and she said that it gave her life a direction and meaning that she didn't have before. It didn't seem like a very good reason to have a baby." - p. 227
What i liked:
- The writing
- The atmosphere
- The weird tension
- Felt similar to Mellissa Broder's books which I really like
-
What I didn't like:
- The misleading description.
- I do think some kind of plot is needed. I can't give this 4 or 5 stars just for the vibes.
Random quotes ✨
"Sometimes I decided that there had to be another life out there, waiting for me to step into it like a new shoe. My life felt as if it didn't match me at all, as if I'd picked up the wrong one by accident. I'd arrived here by mistake, taken a wrong turning on the map." - p. 67
"Me too. But no, the truth about men is that I don't need one. I miss having sex sometimes, but I can't bear living with them. I love being independent. I sacrifice nothing, for nobody." - p. 187
"A friend of mine had a baby when she was eighteen and she said that it gave her life a direction and meaning that she didn't have before. It didn't seem like a very good reason to have a baby." - p. 227
September 20, 2023
3.5 stars.
It's hard to make heads or tales of this. Nothing really happens at all. An unnamed narrator considers her life, dissatisfied with her life. She went to uni hoping this would be the jumping off point for something greater, a neuroses that she fixates on throughout the book. She's frustrated by her boring admin job, her boyfriend's lack of ambition, and the monotony of her life, all the while the recession looms in the background or potentially some other apocalypse. Standard fare for millennial angst. And I don't mean that derogatorily.
It's hard to encapsulate the book without giving a play by play. Beautiful mundane is inaccurate because it isn't beautiful, just mundane.
I'm reminded of Celine Song's brilliant debut Past Lives and how a core theme of that is contentment is not a bad thing, in fact, it's a thing to strive for. Wondering about some potential future or intangible possibility denies you the low, understated beauty of the now. It's funny how a film of this year 2023 would connect with a book from nearly a decade ago but the obliqueness is built into the novel itself. By the end, our narrator realises that.
This book shouldn't work and under less skilled hands, I would have checked out a long time ago. It's helped by some quality dialogue and spare, unobtrusive prose. Like the narrator, I too felt the same leaving university. That damp, sticky bog is creeping in again. Transitions and large life events seem to bring on its onset. Feeling stuck in life, is such a deep pain, a hollowing out that seems to continue forever. For that, Furse should be commended. And if this was in some way a representation of her reality, I hope she found her way through to the other side.
It's hard to make heads or tales of this. Nothing really happens at all. An unnamed narrator considers her life, dissatisfied with her life. She went to uni hoping this would be the jumping off point for something greater, a neuroses that she fixates on throughout the book. She's frustrated by her boring admin job, her boyfriend's lack of ambition, and the monotony of her life, all the while the recession looms in the background or potentially some other apocalypse. Standard fare for millennial angst. And I don't mean that derogatorily.
It's hard to encapsulate the book without giving a play by play. Beautiful mundane is inaccurate because it isn't beautiful, just mundane.
I'm reminded of Celine Song's brilliant debut Past Lives and how a core theme of that is contentment is not a bad thing, in fact, it's a thing to strive for. Wondering about some potential future or intangible possibility denies you the low, understated beauty of the now. It's funny how a film of this year 2023 would connect with a book from nearly a decade ago but the obliqueness is built into the novel itself. By the end, our narrator realises that.
This book shouldn't work and under less skilled hands, I would have checked out a long time ago. It's helped by some quality dialogue and spare, unobtrusive prose. Like the narrator, I too felt the same leaving university. That damp, sticky bog is creeping in again. Transitions and large life events seem to bring on its onset. Feeling stuck in life, is such a deep pain, a hollowing out that seems to continue forever. For that, Furse should be commended. And if this was in some way a representation of her reality, I hope she found her way through to the other side.
September 30, 2025
belly is living with her boyfriend, traffic warden. after two months of soul sucking job searching post university, she lands a job as a data entry clerk / receptionist in a non descript office.
in her mouldy flat with her dead beat boyfriend she wonders if this is all there’ll be to life. when they were both still students life held promise. she doesn’t get the library job or the editor job. traffic warden is content being a bum at home. she rallies against his casual misogyny and laziness until they eventually break up.
it’s a familiar coming of age story for anyone growing up with boomer parents. where’s that cool interesting post life uni at?
the book is an unremarkably written narrative of a women’s slow disillusionment with this dream and her gradual discovery of life within the mundane. she doesn’t get everything she wants in the end. but she begins to make choices that don’t cost her integrity.
i was carried along this book by my own lazy curiosity, as a fellow university graduate with no idea what to do, though my uncertainty has led me to delay slipping into conventional adulthood by escaping to vietnam.
in her mouldy flat with her dead beat boyfriend she wonders if this is all there’ll be to life. when they were both still students life held promise. she doesn’t get the library job or the editor job. traffic warden is content being a bum at home. she rallies against his casual misogyny and laziness until they eventually break up.
it’s a familiar coming of age story for anyone growing up with boomer parents. where’s that cool interesting post life uni at?
the book is an unremarkably written narrative of a women’s slow disillusionment with this dream and her gradual discovery of life within the mundane. she doesn’t get everything she wants in the end. but she begins to make choices that don’t cost her integrity.
i was carried along this book by my own lazy curiosity, as a fellow university graduate with no idea what to do, though my uncertainty has led me to delay slipping into conventional adulthood by escaping to vietnam.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 16, 2023
I really enjoy books where nothing really “happens” and the mundane is used to convey ideas. This book didn’t really do it for me, though. Maybe it’s partly bc I cannot relate to the post university experience. The book description described the office job as “hell” but nothing really happened that seemed to justify that description. Apart from some comments on the bleak weather (which I took as “normal” for England) there was no real impending apocalypse. I saw the main character/her boyfriend’s relationship not really working from the very start of the book. I immediately sensed their low key hate for each other. I was surprised though that they actually ended the relationship. I think it’s easy to stay in place rather than take the risk to try to move somewhere else, especially for relationships. We’ve all seen it.
Overall I don’t regret reading this book, but it didn’t really capture any new thoughts or emotions for me.
Overall I don’t regret reading this book, but it didn’t really capture any new thoughts or emotions for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 25, 2019
This was not bad but not great...just okay. I get that it was supposed to be about days that are all pretty much the same, a boring life, but that doesn’t mean the book itself has to be boring. There are parts where the mundane is elevated to something interesting and even extraordinary, but for the most part the book is like reading the journal of someone you have never met and to whom you keep hoping SOMETHING will happen, but it never does, and you don’t even feel much when you finish reading. Just “oh that’s all.”
dnf
October 24, 2021fuck, this was way too boring to get through. i get its premise, i get what it was trying to do, and i applaud it for that but this bleak character study just doesn't do it for me. (or maybe im just too young to understand!)
December 10, 2024
I think about this book at least once a week since I read it
May 4, 2015
I won this through First Reads. Thank you to Burning Eye Books and Goodreads.
Furse's assured debut novel Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is bound to resonate with a lot of people. The novel's nameless narrator has graduated with a first in English Lit, but finding work is hard. She lives with her boyfriend, only known as the Traffic Warden, who enjoys his new job, despite hoping for something better as a student. Our narrator finds herself with an unstimulating job in Weblands, a pokey little upstairs office. She's overqualified, but she settles.
I really like Furse's take on office politics, commutes and relationships. She paints very believable characters and manages to make the mundaneness of office life amusing with her wry and spot-on observations. You've probably met some of these office characters in real life. I know I have. As well as being funny in its bleakness, there are moments when you really empathise with the narrator's new, boring life. We are told to go to uni if you're smart enough, and do something you love and you'll be rewarded. That is the hope and what youth are told again and again but what if it doesn't happen? For those in their early twenties, just starting their working lives, this book will strike a chord.
What I'm not too keen on is the book's font. There's something off with the kerning in places and the letters bunch up together and bleed into one another. I also wish that Furse gave the ending a little more direction, even after its leisurely pace. The ending to me was ok, but it fizzled out a little.
For fans of Douglas Coupland, this is a new novel about being in a place you hope is temporary.
Furse's assured debut novel Everybody Knows This is Nowhere is bound to resonate with a lot of people. The novel's nameless narrator has graduated with a first in English Lit, but finding work is hard. She lives with her boyfriend, only known as the Traffic Warden, who enjoys his new job, despite hoping for something better as a student. Our narrator finds herself with an unstimulating job in Weblands, a pokey little upstairs office. She's overqualified, but she settles.
I really like Furse's take on office politics, commutes and relationships. She paints very believable characters and manages to make the mundaneness of office life amusing with her wry and spot-on observations. You've probably met some of these office characters in real life. I know I have. As well as being funny in its bleakness, there are moments when you really empathise with the narrator's new, boring life. We are told to go to uni if you're smart enough, and do something you love and you'll be rewarded. That is the hope and what youth are told again and again but what if it doesn't happen? For those in their early twenties, just starting their working lives, this book will strike a chord.
What I'm not too keen on is the book's font. There's something off with the kerning in places and the letters bunch up together and bleed into one another. I also wish that Furse gave the ending a little more direction, even after its leisurely pace. The ending to me was ok, but it fizzled out a little.
For fans of Douglas Coupland, this is a new novel about being in a place you hope is temporary.
May 6, 2015
I won this book in the goodreads, first reads/giveaway scheme, I don't just enter any giveaways I enter the ones that appeal to me and this book appealed to me.
I was able to relate to the narrator personally, as a receptionist in a mundane office and feeling like I should be doing more with my life and didn't even find myself wanting to know the name of the narrator as it did not seem to matter as so many people are in that position. However despite this, it was a unique novel. I also liked the way that she did not go on to marry in what seemed an dysfunctional relationship and that she was able to move on and both parties accepted this.
I liked the way it was structured, however, towards the end I felt like I would like more frequent chapters as I find it difficult to put a book down unless it's at the end of a chapter.
I was able to relate to the narrator personally, as a receptionist in a mundane office and feeling like I should be doing more with my life and didn't even find myself wanting to know the name of the narrator as it did not seem to matter as so many people are in that position. However despite this, it was a unique novel. I also liked the way that she did not go on to marry in what seemed an dysfunctional relationship and that she was able to move on and both parties accepted this.
I liked the way it was structured, however, towards the end I felt like I would like more frequent chapters as I find it difficult to put a book down unless it's at the end of a chapter.
May 4, 2015
Everybody Knows This Is NowhereAlice Furse
A novel of everyday life in an office, how can that be interesting or entertaining – but it absolutely and amazingly is. Compelling and sometimes with humour this beautifully written book captures the essence of the day to day existence in the office and life at home with the Traffic Warden. The author portrays the characters perfectly and with empathy. I loved it and look forward to reading more books by Alice Furse.
I received a copy of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere free as a Goodreads first-read giveaway. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book.
A novel of everyday life in an office, how can that be interesting or entertaining – but it absolutely and amazingly is. Compelling and sometimes with humour this beautifully written book captures the essence of the day to day existence in the office and life at home with the Traffic Warden. The author portrays the characters perfectly and with empathy. I loved it and look forward to reading more books by Alice Furse.
I received a copy of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere free as a Goodreads first-read giveaway. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to read this book.
February 5, 2016
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.
It is a slow paced description of the everyday life of an office worker.
The mundane day to day routine, the dull commute, the niggling details of life with a boyfriend are carefully described and there are moments which resonated with me.
This is not an action packed thriller nor a love story but something more interesting and important than that. I have certainly lived some of this life and that is what makes it special. Congratulations to the author for their firstnovel.
It is a slow paced description of the everyday life of an office worker.
The mundane day to day routine, the dull commute, the niggling details of life with a boyfriend are carefully described and there are moments which resonated with me.
This is not an action packed thriller nor a love story but something more interesting and important than that. I have certainly lived some of this life and that is what makes it special. Congratulations to the author for their firstnovel.
May 5, 2015
I won this through First Reads. Thank you to Burning Eye Books and Goodreads.
You finish university, get a degree, and then what? Furse's debut novel explores the bleak world of mundane life. Our nameless main character is in a boring office job, a boring relationship and a boring life.
This is a bleak observation on the life many twenty-something year olds are facing. Furse has an assured and confident writing style with wonderful life observations and black humour. Her style is easy to read, yet the content I found difficult at times, perhaps too close to home.
You finish university, get a degree, and then what? Furse's debut novel explores the bleak world of mundane life. Our nameless main character is in a boring office job, a boring relationship and a boring life.
This is a bleak observation on the life many twenty-something year olds are facing. Furse has an assured and confident writing style with wonderful life observations and black humour. Her style is easy to read, yet the content I found difficult at times, perhaps too close to home.
October 16, 2015
This book is beautifully bleak. Sometimes you read a book where the author seems to have jumped inside your head and written down your very thoughts and emotions, where every page it seemed had something to say to me... this is one of those books. Aside from that, if you want reflective, bleak observation on a modern, 20-something years old's everyday existence, coupled with sparse, but weighted language then give this a go.
May 17, 2015
I was pleased to receive this book from Goodreads. As life happens to the un-named central character, I walked alongside her, getting to know her and recognising my younger self. She goes day to day and although recognising her frustration and unhappiness, seems both unwilling and unable to break free. This book is not full of fast paced action or drama, but it kept me gripped all the way through. A great read that made me think. I will be looking out for more from this author.
February 13, 2016
I received this book as part of Goodreads Giveaway. This is a bleak, sad novel about a graduate stuck in a boring, unchallenging job whilst feeling like there's more out there but she doesn't seem to know how to or have the motivation to break free from her mundane life and find that something. On the whole I enjoyed this book, it's an easy read, but not an especially uplifting one, and like the unnamed narrator I was left feeling like theer was something missing.
October 24, 2022
[3.5] A confident narrative voice, believable characters, highly relatable post-uni ennui.
The synopsis claims that the unnamed narrator 'hatches a dramatic plan to escape' - unless I missed something, nothing of the sort happens.
I appreciate the art of chronicling the monotonous and mundane. I knew this wouldn't be plot-driven or climactic, but I needed a stronger story arc to find it entirely satisfying.
The synopsis claims that the unnamed narrator 'hatches a dramatic plan to escape' - unless I missed something, nothing of the sort happens.
I appreciate the art of chronicling the monotonous and mundane. I knew this wouldn't be plot-driven or climactic, but I needed a stronger story arc to find it entirely satisfying.
August 31, 2015
I was lucky enough to win this book as a Goodreads Giveaway.
I honestly don't generally laugh out loud at many books but there was some parts of this that hit the nail on the head so accurately that I couldn't help myself. Don't get me wrong, it's not a comedy but the writing is so good you can identify with the characters so well.
I'd definitely recommend it to some of my colleagues!
I honestly don't generally laugh out loud at many books but there was some parts of this that hit the nail on the head so accurately that I couldn't help myself. Don't get me wrong, it's not a comedy but the writing is so good you can identify with the characters so well.
I'd definitely recommend it to some of my colleagues!
April 17, 2015
A terrific, sad, hopeful novel for the zero-hours-contract generation about work, love or the lack thereof, and launching into adulthood. Full review here: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2015...
June 13, 2016
A story narrated by a young woman who, despite graduating with a good degree, ends up with a basic office job. The story looks at the bleskness of her life, job and relationship but told with humour. I found it a compelling read but disappointed by the ending
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