More startling than the author’s experience, which she acknowledges could never really be authentic (the paid-for car, visits home, ATM card and freedom to walk out on a job don’t help with the pretending), is the book’s unobstructed view of the awful lives of low-wage workers. A waitress, Tina, can’t afford a deposit for an apartment, so she pays through the nose for a Days Inn room every night. And we learn the good news, that Gail, another waitress, can now park the truck where she lives in the restaurant’s lot.
Full of riveting grit, this book is something else. As for Ehrenreich, you love her for treating you to humor: at Wal-Mart she frets, “I could be banished to bras.” But you want to leave her when she starts banging her drum. We might have learned a lot more had she given jobs more than four chintzy weeks, but she sticks around only long enough to prove a point. She clearly already had it in for Wal-Mart, cleaning services and–why not?–Christianity, Yuppies and stay-at-home moms. And for someone who takes down Jesus, she sure can preach, proclaiming from on high that she has never hired a cleaning person (except for those two times). Who needs it? Certainly not this book, which, thanks to its characters, is already unforgettable.
