In Daisy Buchanan’s second novel, the author’s vast experience working across the full spectrum of British media and publishing is exploited to full effect. The award-winning journalist and podcast host knows intimately how starkly the interior reality of working in women’s magazines contrasts with its glossy, glamorous exterior.
Careering presents the experience of two women struggling to reconcile their passion for their work with how the industry unfailingly exploits their ambitions. Imogen, a twentysomething sex blogger, is still hustling for her big break; Harri is an accomplished editor who has been sidelined for an overdue promotion. Together they embark on a new project that pushes them both to their limits.
Thematically, the toxic work culture that pervades many creative industries is fertile territory to interrogate. Buchanan is a queen of acerbic wit and demonstrates an incredible talent for the dark comedy that so perfectly articulates the often-poisonous power structures at play.
Many young women will identify with Imogen, who for so long “confused success with self-esteem” and allowed employers to dictate how she felt about herself. Her character captures the complex choices that overwhelm many young women today in a powerful way that contributes something meaningful to the conversation about this moment in feminism.
Imogen thinks of all the women crying in workplaces across the city: “Because we’re not good enough. Because we’re only ever one mistake away from catastrophe and collapse. Because we have too many feelings, and too many ways to fail.” Harri, as the senior role model, however, feels less successfully drawn – the absence of her perspective would not have seriously impacted the narrative and so her role feels under-utilised.
The strength of Careering is in how it captures, with clever comedy, the fluctuating scale of dread that many feel in the current work culture, the hourly oscillation between low-level anxiety and high-stakes panic without ever losing composure. What it lacks, however, is a more purposeful narrative drive. There is repeated mirroring of what we’ve already witnessed where deeper revelation, subversion or evolution is keenly needed. This novel might have delivered twice the impact at half the length, and negated how unfortunately underwhelming the denouement feels.
Nonetheless, Careering is, for the most part, great company that will offer solace to many who find themselves searching outside their jobs for something more.
