Company Women

DeGrave (who teaches at Pittsburgh State University) provides a plot of sorts but not much style in this plodding first novel. Hulda, a dump-truck driver on strike, is invited to become a management trainee and accepts, despite the protests of her co-worker (and perhaps something more) Vern. Even though Hulda's recruitment is meant to demoralize her fellow laborers, her whirlwind initiation into the upper-crust management world is frankly unbelievable. Besides receiving a $50,000 starting salary plus stock, she is tutored by a woman named Marge not only on how to work in an office, but on how to dress and socialize as well. Hulda's married boss, Robert, makes it clear that he wants to sleep with her, and meanwhile, Vern's disturbed daughter, Nora, has fallen under the spell of Sister Phyllis, who Nora met briefly in a mall bathroom and who runs some kind of Christian cult. Everyone seems to know each other, but this interaction never gives the characters greater depth or dimension. Nora keeps a diary, and plenty of entries are included, so a lot of ground is covered twice. DeGrave hits on some interesting points, but this scattershot novel heads in so many directions that it ends up back where it started. If meant as farce, it doesn't go far enough; if meant to be realism, it is way off base. (Sept.)