In the tradition of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and Jennifer Close’s Girls in White Dresses comes a sparkling debut told in vignettes that speak to a new generation not trying to have it all but hoping to make sense of it all.   “A pin-sharp, utterly addictive debut.”—Vogue (U.K.)   “Full of crackling, voice-of-a-generation observations.”—Glamour (U.K.)   “A deadpan comic debut for the procrastination generation.”—The GuardianClaire Flannery has just quit her office job, hoping to take some time to discover her real passion. The problem is, she’s not exactly sure how to go about finding it. Without the distractions of a regular routine, Claire confronts the best and worst parts of herself: the generous, attentive part that visits her grandmother for tea and cooks special meals for her boyfriend, Luke, and the part that she feels will never measure up and makes regrettable comments after too many glasses of wine. What emerges is a candid, moving portrait of a clear-eyed heroine trying to forge her own way, a wholly relatable character whose imperfections and uncanny observations highlight what makes us all different and yet inescapably linked. Praise for Not Working “Lots of people say they laugh out loud when they read a book they love. But in the case of Not Working, I really did laugh out loud, often and raucously. Claire Flannery is quite simply the most charming lost soul I’ve ever met. If you’ve ever felt like an impostor in your own life, been driven crazy by your mother, or worried that you were out of step with your friends, Not Working is your next great read.”—Elisabeth Egan, author of A Window Opens “Lisa Owens’s eye for life’s mundane details makes for a novel that is hilarious, sharp, and true. Not Working is simply delicious.”—Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants and The Possibilities “Not Working is as close to the tenderness and funniness and uniqueness of real life as books get. It makes me feel like I did when I found Adrian Mole decades ago—like I know this person on the page or, in a way, am them. It’s really very rare, and very special.”—David Whitehouse, author of Mobile Library “Not Working is absolutely brilliant, insanely funny, but also moving and true. Lisa Owens is one of those writers on whom nothing is lost.”—Nathan Filer, Costa Award–winning author of The Shock of the Fall “I loved Lisa Owens’s Not Working, a bright, funny novel of daily life suffused with real melancholy.”—Marie Phillips, author of Gods Behaving Badly and The Table of Less Valued Knights “Lisa Owens is a comedy genius and a serious, skillful, and beautiful writer. Not Working is so clever and original, pithy and poignant, capturing the voice of a bright, lost generation. It’s not often you find a kindred spirit in a book, but I found one here.”—Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Animals “Owens has a natural warmth and wit that leap off the pages. . . . Sharp, incisive and laugh-out-loud funny.”—The Observer“Owens deploys a deft sense of humor to help us laugh at the incongruities of contemporary upper-middle-class crisis.”—Kirkus Reviews