Welcome to the Working Week by Paul Vlitos

This book was heavily recommended to me by my boyfriend. He said he’d read it multiple times and really enjoyed it. So, I had a read of the first couple of pages and was instantly drawn in.

Welcome to the Working Week, focuses on recently single Martin Sargent (not to be confused with Martin Sergent).We follow Martin through a short period of his life, meeting various family members and close friends. The story starts off with Martin looking for a new housemate as his girlfriend, Sally, has recently moved out. He works in an office somewhere in London (no one’s really sure what he actually does) where we see his feelings towards co-worker Laura. On several occasions, Martin goes on nights out with his friends and appears to make quite an idiot out of himself whilst under the influence.

There isn’t really much else to be said about the overall plot of the book, a majority of it is spend with him apologising to his friends for making an idiot of himself whilst trying to convince Sally to leave her new boyfriend, David and trying to win Laura over. When I put it like that it doesn’t sound like the most interesting book does it? What makes the book different and interesting is that the entirety of the book is composed of emails.

This makes the story very interesting as what Martin says or does outside of what he writes in his emails, we do not get to see. This gets particularly entertaining when Martin comes back from a night out and emails his (usually annoyed) friends apologising for the previous night or sometimes asking what actually happened over night. This is a feeling that many people will be able to identify with.

Through these emails we get to see a lot of the characters in the book and what they are like. There’s Martin’s friend Barney, also known as DJ Idiot, who DJs (poorly) at local bars, forcing his friends to come along. He’s often described as an idiot, made fun of amongst the others and may be a bit slow but he comes across as a guy with good intentions and is always a good friend to Martin. Ella, another of Martin’s friends, constantly pokes fun at Martin in a banterous way despite coming across as hard faced and slightly tom-boyish. There are many other major and minor characters who are also well developed and thought out.

Vlitos, in my opinion, did an amazing job and encapsulating how people communicate and socialise and when major disastrous events occur, the issues are handled sensitively and realistically. As I have mentioned previously, the characters are all well created and likeable even though you recognise their faults. Vlitos also had an amazing way of making you sympathise and be on Martin’s side of things even when he was in the wrong or being unreasonable.

I would highly recommend giving this a read, it doesn’t seem particularly well known and I believe it should be. The email correspondence  formula Vlitos uses makes the book very easy , quick and enjoyable to read, it’s nothing revolutionary in the world of literature but it’s quick and fun, I found myself audibly laughing whilst reading it for a lot of the time so I would definitely give it a go.