“If You Can Get It” by Brendan Hodge. Ignatius Press. (San Francisco, California, 2020). 285 pp., $16.95.
The first of May is recognized in countries around the world as a day celebrating the contributions of labor, and in the Catholic Church particularly as the feast of St. Joseph the Worker. This great feast day encourages Catholics to ask some important questions: What is the nature of work? Is it just an activity for making money, or does it have some higher purpose? What makes work dignified, and what, if anything, makes for a “good job”?
In his 2020 novel, “If You Can Get It,” Brendan Hodge explores these questions through the career missteps and misadventures of Jen Nilsson, a high-powered career woman with an excellent salary (and a beautiful San Francisco apartment) courtesy of her job in Silicon Valley. Recognizable to working women everywhere as the ideal we can only dream of matching —Nilsson has enviable self-discipline, a morning workout routine, a perfect wardrobe and a formidable work ethic — she is nevertheless plagued by the same identity crisis and loneliness that workaholism brings to all, regardless of gender. That is, at least, until she loses her job and her aimless younger sister Katie shows up at her door.
“If You Can Get It” deserves praise for its dry wit, its keen insight into the difficulties and ironies of our global supply chain and its touchingly human depiction of the two radically different sisters. There’s even a subtle slow-burn romance for those who, like this reviewer, enjoy a well-written relationship. Moreover, the book keeps the reader guessing; at several points where this reviewer was dreading a clichéd outcome, Hodge cleverly subverted expectations, making use of tropes where appropriate without relying on them.
What really fascinated this reader, however, was the novel’s ongoing discussion about the nature and purpose of work. Early in the book, Nilsson’s sister Katie astutely judges that the project Nilsson has been working on — an app-specific phone dongle — is something only those entrenched in the tech-world culture of Silicon Valley would think is marketable: “What’s the point? People don’t want to carry around another thing in their pockets.”
In what is certainly a surprise to Nilsson (but perhaps not to the reader), when the company is bought up by a larger corporation on the day of her big presentation, her role is cut and Nilsson is let go without much more than a platitude. Her next gig, a product-line director for a luxury handbag company, burns her out in less than three months following an ill-fated work trip to China. Both of these jobs, the careful reader will note, have some things in common: both are selling fundamentally pointless products, and both treat their employees not as people but as cogs in a money-making machine.
Nilsson’s career disasters are not the only reflection of this theme of work and its purpose; Katie starts out the book as a drifting college graduate who spends her days playing Skyrim and blowing off shifts, and Daniel, Nilsson’s lawyer friend, discusses his choice to leave the corporate world for less draining legal work. Nilsson’s managerial-class life also briefly crosses paths with working-class people being exploited by the same forces, including harassed waitresses and underpaid factory laborers, and it’s not until she secures a position that both matches her talents and makes a useful product that her career problems are resolved. Brilliantly, however, “If You Can Get It” does not conclude once Nilsson has at last found a fulfilling job. Instead, Hodge pushes further, encouraging the reader to ask about the second half of the nature of labor: For whom, exactly, do we work? And can any job, even a good job, truly provide the full purpose for one’s life?
A must-read for any working young professional, “If You Can Get It” is a funny and thoughtful meditation on the nature of work through a Catholic lens. Those in the midst of a career change will find Nilsson’s job-hunt fiascos hilariously relatable, and those of us lucky enough to be in satisfying careers will find ourselves appreciating just how nice it really is to have good work, if you can get it.
Reicher is publications administrative coordinator at The Catholic Spirit. She can be reached at reichertm@archspm.org
