A Cowardly Woman No More

Starred review from February 13, 2023
A series of uncanny events befall a woman at her company’s annual banquet in Cooney’s captivating latest (after One Night Two Souls Went Walking). Trisha Donahue grew up poor, but now, at 44 and married with two kids, she’s a successful analyst. On banquet day, though, things start to fall apart. To begin with, the venue, a countryside restaurant that’s located near where Trisha grew up, has recently reopened after being allegedly damaged by a comet. And Trisha has just been passed over for a promotion that she and her colleagues had considered a done deal. At the restaurant, she leaves her table during the dinner to wander around the building, and upon walking into an empty room, her inner life fires up (“The deepening hush around me felt like a new friend, just for me”), and things get delightfully weird as the night goes on. A restaurant employee brushes off her questions about the comet and an old boyfriend serves her dinner in an attic, where others visit from her past. Along the way, she reflects on her humble origins and the desperation of her new life. This elegant and off-kilter upending of the office novel sings.

May 1, 2023
A 44-year-old woman comes to terms with her life while attending an annual corporate banquet. Software analyst Trisha Donahue always relished the annual boozy parties thrown at the Rose & Emerald restaurant in central Massachusetts by the Boston company where she's worked for eight years. But new management runs the company with a more corporate ethos, and speechifying has replaced drinking alcohol, no longer allowed, at the now unofficially mandatory banquets. Having learned that she's been passed over for a promotion she was all but promised, Trisha is a reluctant attendee this year. Then she's stunned, not in a good way, when management announces to the crowd that she's the first woman "Employee of the Year." Trisha flees within the passageways of the almost magically charming Rose & Emerald, located (perhaps too) coincidentally in the community where she grew up "on the wrong side of the tracks." While Cooney effectively draws peripheral characters like Trisha's privileged yet self-aware husband and her stoic, ailing boss, the only character that truly matters here is Trisha. As she struggles through this one crazy day, she reviews her evolution from a working-class girl with brains and ambition to a woman afraid to rock the status quo. The depiction of Trisha's middle-class financial anxiety is spot-on, but Cooney lays on the sociopolitical critique with a heavy hand. Trisha so relentlessly complains about blockheaded bosses and bemoans turning "corporate" that the good reasons she's angry become boring. The novel's explorations of class inequality and corporate mentality seldom reach beyond the obvious, and its perspective on society's unfair treatment of women seems dated--Trisha has no awareness of the #MeToo movement, and her thoughts on what clothes a successful woman needs, including pantyhose, feel anachronistic. But Cooney is remarkably adept at capturing minute inner crises within an individual and the imperfect but real connections between people. While the writing can be pessimistic, even cynical, neither Cooney nor her central character is afraid to look kindness in the face when it arises. No mean feat. A shining exploration of human frailty and endurance falters when it attempts social analysis.

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