3.0
Jillian
ByPublisher Description
The "sublimely awkward and hilarious" (Chicago Tribune), National Book Award "5 Under 35"-garnering first novel from the acclaimed author of The New Me--now in a new edition
Twenty-four-year-old Megan may have her whole life ahead of her, but it already feels like a dead end, thanks to her dreadful job as a gastroenterologist's receptionist and her heart-clogging resentment of the success and happiness of everyone around her. But no one stokes Megan's bitterness quite like her coworker, Jillian, a grotesquely optimistic, thirty-five-year-old single mother whose chirpy positivity obscures her mounting struggles.
Megan and Jillian's lives become increasingly precarious as their faulty coping mechanisms--denial, self-help books, alcohol, religion, prescription painkillers, obsessive criticism, alienated boyfriends, and, in Jillian's case, the misguided purchase of a dog--send them spiraling toward their downfalls. Wickedly authentic and brutally funny, Jillian is a subversive portrait of two women trapped in cycles of self-delusion and self-destruction, each more like the other than they would care to admit.
Twenty-four-year-old Megan may have her whole life ahead of her, but it already feels like a dead end, thanks to her dreadful job as a gastroenterologist's receptionist and her heart-clogging resentment of the success and happiness of everyone around her. But no one stokes Megan's bitterness quite like her coworker, Jillian, a grotesquely optimistic, thirty-five-year-old single mother whose chirpy positivity obscures her mounting struggles.
Megan and Jillian's lives become increasingly precarious as their faulty coping mechanisms--denial, self-help books, alcohol, religion, prescription painkillers, obsessive criticism, alienated boyfriends, and, in Jillian's case, the misguided purchase of a dog--send them spiraling toward their downfalls. Wickedly authentic and brutally funny, Jillian is a subversive portrait of two women trapped in cycles of self-delusion and self-destruction, each more like the other than they would care to admit.
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3.0

SpinelessBookReviews
Created 8 days agoShare
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“Immaculate vibes and prose”

Matt Bender
Created 9 days agoShare
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“Very funny. I would be one of my favorite books if I read it earlier in my life. Butler’s use of a roving PoV, hate monologues, and ability to present irony is distinctive and enjoyable. One reason I find her characters so relatable and authentic is because Butler is sensitive to both the material and relational problems her characters face. What makes her books fun is her character are never too marginalized and their crisis are self-inflicted and absurd.”

Felix Robin
Created 14 days agoShare
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Googoogaga
Created 26 days agoShare
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