The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips

I thought I was about to read a satire about office life, but this tiny, tightly written, claustrophobic novel is way too dark and goes beyond satire into a kind of horror fable, taking on the large question of predestination.   A young woman struggling to find work and start a family with her husband in an unnamed city finds the only work she can which is entering data, (names and numbers), into a database for an unknown purpose.  Her office is soulless and oppressive, the work boring and tedious.  She meets no one other than her faceless, repulsive boss and one strangely exuberant co-worker.  Attempts to engage with others in the long hallways of closed doors are met with wariness.  When she asks her boss the purpose of the data entry, she is advised not to be curious.  Needing the work she complies without effort, until she unexpectedly discovers the true nature of her job. Further her husband mysteriously disappears, ratcheting up the tension for the reader.  While comparison to Calvino on the inside jacket may not be merited (I think more like Eggars), this first novel by Phillips is successful in what it aspires to do, and I will definitely be looking to see what she comes up with next.