Book Review: “The Very Nice Box” by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman

The Very Nice Box by Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman

Yet another “revenge of the English majors”!  I really liked this first novel, a collaboration, no less. 

Blacked and Gleichman have a lot of fun with company life.  The satire is broad and merciless. I’ll just say that the head of the HR department has the job title “Chief People Officer”, and leave the rest for you to discover. 

Protagonist Ava works at a home furnishings company, where she designs boxes.  After a tragic auto accident, she has been deep in despair.  Her work is her life.  Not that she isn’t very, very good at designing boxes, including her current “Passion Project”, sold as “The Very Nice Box”.

Ava’s settled life is shaken by the arrival of a new manager, rapidly falling in love with same, and a serious of increasingly peculiar events.  We can’t help but root for Ava and her friends, even as we cringe at questionable decision after questionable decision.  Not that we are sure what the right decisions should be most of the time.

Eventually, things seem to come out OK, despite everything.  I think.  There are some loose ends I kind of worried about (like, what happened to Mat?).

I have to say that most of the men come off terribly in this story.   But then many of the women, companies, computers, etc., don’t look very nice either.  But not everyone or everything is as bad or good as they first appear. 

I think the main lesson is the importance of real friendship and love. 

I look forward to more from these two.

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1. Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman, The Very Nice Box, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 2021.

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