On the Clock by Claire Baglin
A marvelous debut from the hugely talented young French writer Claire Baglin, this tender and painful portrait of working-class life finds shards of poetry inside the twin hardships of poverty and service work
"A striking and necessary novel, precise and luminously simple" -- Les inrockuptibles
"A remarkably surefooted first novel, written without anger, but with a slight ironic distance that makes of her telling of the potato-frying process a passage worthy of inclusion in French literary anthologies." -- Le Monde
"With En Salle, twenty-two-year-old Claire Baglin joins the ranks of Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, [and] Alain Robbe-Grillet as an author at Éditions de Minuit. By means of a family story, En Salle explores examples of laborious alienation. Baglin deftly uses empathy, humour and a distanced perspective to share the effects and affect both of the narrator’s temporary job and of her father’s years on a shop floor. Baglin’s novel contrasts two mentally and physically damaging workplaces characterised by frenzied behaviour, malfunctioning machinery and clothing regulations… It’s not clear, by the end of En Salle, whether the cycle of exploitation has been broken or not. But a hoard of memories has certainly been deployed to great effect." -- Ruth Cruikshank - TLS
"What makes En salle is its rhythm, its precision, its muted anger, its humor, and its rigor: a pitiless attention, carried along on language." -- Libération
""Superb and astonishing"" -- Michael Magee
""A mesmerizing novel about the cleaning rituals at a fast food restaurant."" -- Dayna Tortorici - N+1
""This debut novel, translated from the original French by Jordan Stump, playfully explores social inequity through the lens of one family’s relationship to work. The narrator, a 20-year-old in search of a summer gig, is hired for a fast-food position after a particularly grueling interview. She alternates recounting the minutiae of the job — “frozen rectangle” fires, boiling oil, repetition — and memories featuring her electrician father, a graceless and unfortunate country man whom she both loves and is ashamed of. On the Clock is a visceral depiction of manual labor, alienation, and family in rural France."" -- Jasmine Vojdani - Vulture
"A remarkably surefooted first novel, written without anger, but with a slight ironic distance that makes of her telling of the potato-frying process a passage worthy of inclusion in French literary anthologies." -- Le Monde
"With En Salle, twenty-two-year-old Claire Baglin joins the ranks of Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, [and] Alain Robbe-Grillet as an author at Éditions de Minuit. By means of a family story, En Salle explores examples of laborious alienation. Baglin deftly uses empathy, humour and a distanced perspective to share the effects and affect both of the narrator’s temporary job and of her father’s years on a shop floor. Baglin’s novel contrasts two mentally and physically damaging workplaces characterised by frenzied behaviour, malfunctioning machinery and clothing regulations… It’s not clear, by the end of En Salle, whether the cycle of exploitation has been broken or not. But a hoard of memories has certainly been deployed to great effect." -- Ruth Cruikshank - TLS
"What makes En salle is its rhythm, its precision, its muted anger, its humor, and its rigor: a pitiless attention, carried along on language." -- Libération
""Superb and astonishing"" -- Michael Magee
""A mesmerizing novel about the cleaning rituals at a fast food restaurant."" -- Dayna Tortorici - N+1
""This debut novel, translated from the original French by Jordan Stump, playfully explores social inequity through the lens of one family’s relationship to work. The narrator, a 20-year-old in search of a summer gig, is hired for a fast-food position after a particularly grueling interview. She alternates recounting the minutiae of the job — “frozen rectangle” fires, boiling oil, repetition — and memories featuring her electrician father, a graceless and unfortunate country man whom she both loves and is ashamed of. On the Clock is a visceral depiction of manual labor, alienation, and family in rural France."" -- Jasmine Vojdani - Vulture
Claire Baglin was born in 1998 in Normandy, where her father labored in a factory and her mother was a social worker. On the Clock is her first book. Jordan Stump is the noted translator of several modern French novelists, including novel prize winner Claude Simon, for whom his translation of Le Jardin des Plantes won the French American Foundation’s Translation Prize.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780811239356 |
| ISBN 10 | 0811239357 |
| Title | On the Clock |
| Author | Claire Baglin |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | New Directions Publishing Corporation |
| Year published | 2025-03-04 |
| Number of pages | 144 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |