The Cleaner

Starred review from November 1, 2023
Wells' darkly humorous and sharply observed satire and first novel stars an unnamed female narrator who is a night cleaner in an office building in an unnamed city. She works with L., a female security guard, and M., a nonbinary delivery person. Nothing exciting happens, except that she fashions herself as the office guardian angel to the desk jockeys whose cubicles she cleans. She judges, scorns, and takes pity on them, according to the items she finds at their stations. She names them Sad Intern, Yarn Guy, Mr. Buff, etc. and exploits their surroundings to reward or punish them, feeding the hero syndrome that allows her to escape the reality of her depressing and isolating job. She doles out maxims like "School is the most boring thing you can learn about a person." She ramps up her meddling when she finds out that the company may be headed for disaster. She digs up dirt on the CEO and manages to make headway, but a rude awakening awaits. Wells has brilliantly crafted an obnoxiously opinionated, delusional, yet sympathetic raconteur, tightly holding the reader's attention while exposing existential dread gleaned from petty human drama. And it's so inappropriately fun to read.

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Starred review from December 11, 2023
Wells turns the office novel on its head in their sly and satirical debut. Here, the nine-to-five workers are largely absent, their personalities inferred or imagined by the novel’s unnamed narrator, who cleans the office building after hours. At first, the nicknames she coins for the daytime employees (Mr. Buff, Yarn Guy, Sad Intern) seem harmlessly whimsical, a creative means of alleviating the drudgery of her job. Soon, however, it becomes clear that the narrator’s involvement goes far beyond emptying the trash and picking up used tea bags: “My actual job is to take care of everyone. They need so much help.” She intervenes in the lives of those she admires by deleting appointments to make space for self-care. For those she disapproves of—including the company’s morally bankrupt CEO—she exposes their secrets. The narrator’s desire to be indispensable rather than invisible drives the narrative, which shifts into high gear as her meddling grows increasingly unsettling and her delusions more off-kilter. Wells is a keen observer of the mundane indignities and petty dramas of office life. Rarely has cubicle culture been depicted in such griminess or with such glee. (Jan.)Correction: An earlier version of this review used the wrong pronoun to refer to the author.

January 1, 2024
An unnamed cleaner cares for an office building and the people who work there in this quiet thriller. The woman comes to the office every night, diligently cleaning four floors under the unofficial supervision of L., the security guard. As she works, she develops elaborate personas for the people whose desks she cleans: Yarn Guy is a mild-mannered knitter who leaves his projects in his drawers, Sad Intern is a frazzled young woman struggling to make herself noticed, and Mr. Buff is most concerned with working out. In her way, the cleaner tries to help them, sometimes by invading their privacy; when she finds cigarettes in Mr. Buff's desk, she douses them with cleaning solution before putting them back. She sees her role as a shepherd, all-knowing because of her access to their desks and eager to help ensure the employees of the company are at their best. She reads their emails and tries to drum up relationships by putting one person's belongings on another's desk. She also steals, re-creating elements of the office in her own apartment. But when her spying reveals that the CEO is having numerous affairs, she begins to fear his indiscretion could threaten the well-being of the company, and she takes things into her own hands to save it. Reminiscent of Ottessa Moshfegh's work in its excavations of a troubled woman's descent into more and more uncomfortable behavior, this novel is a suspenseful, though slow-paced, examination of one woman's delusion. This gripping, sometimes shocking novel relies on quiet twists to keep the reader guessing.

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