Labor Day

Description

In this wry, nightmarish novel about life at work, a young, unconventional union organizer, Gregg Harsh, decides to unionize the staff of a large national union. In order to stop the unionizing effort, the president of the union, Harvey Lathrop, asks that his greatest adversary, Stillman Colby, be brought out of retirement by his union-busting consulting firm. Colby's wife, Frannie, is fiercely opposed to his donning his business suit again and going out to battle. And then their marriage is even more imperiled by the assistant Colby is given to support his work at the union, a young union executive named Kathleen. Each of the characters bases his life on a set of ideals, but it is hard to tell the difference between ideals and desires as the characters manipulate and undermine each other. Beneath the conflict, humor, and lust, the novel is sad in its depiction of what people will do to defend and to spread their psychological turf. Once again, the author's entertaining, disconcerting, and deftly structured fantasy gets deep into the realities of the lives we lead at work.