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A disaffected young woman's work as a cleaner takes her on an increasingly surreal search for a creative fulfillment, gainful employment, and the meaning of life in this sharp, tragicomic debut—perfect for fans of Melissa Broder, Jen Beagin, and Alexandra Tanner.
A young artist returns to her childhood home, with a host of degrees and diplomas in her back pocket. But when forced to confront the reality that the world sees no use for her scholarly exploits, she must find a job—and quickly.
Overqualified, underemployed, and idle, she starts a job as a cleaner for a gallery, where she meets another aspiring artist—Isabella—and they begin a passionate affair. Isabella could not be more different from the cleaner: she's elegant, successful…and living with her filthy rich boyfriend Paul.
Isabella sneaks the cleaner into her life by hiring her to scrub the apartment she shares with Paul. Little by little, the cleaner relaxes into the comfort of her new surroundings. But when Isabella leaves the apartment one day and doesn't come back, the cleaner is left to decide whether to back to her old life—or stay and step into Isabella's.
"A messy, sad-girl novel that's too improbable to fully enjoy." —Kirkus Reviews
"Dark, strange, and gripping...It's a memorably off-kilter portrait of a woman's search for meaning." —Publishers Weekly
This information about Cleaner was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jess Shannon is a writer from Birmingham UK and a proud graduate of the Warwick Writing Programme. She completed her MA in writing in 2021. She spends most of her free time at the theatre and hates cleaning.
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