Workhorse
A Novel

Quotes

“A fierce, funny, and unflinching examination of ambition, class, and the quiet indignities of being underestimated. You certainly don’t need to have worked in fashion to appreciate Palmer’s razor-sharp and deliciously wry observations about the industry—but as someone who did, I both adored and applaud her honesty.” —Coco Mellors, New York Times bestselling author of Blue Sisters

“Workhorse is a sly, fun, and astutely observed novel about what happens when one young woman’s ambition runs amok. Caroline Palmer transports you to the world of glossy magazines in the early 2000s, back when the going was good—the expense accounts, the parties, the fashion—while weaving in a suspenseful story about an assistant who will do anything in her power to move up on the masthead. It was propulsive, surprising, and fun. I ate it up.” —Emma Rosenblum, bestselling author of Mean Moms and Bad Summer People

"Former fashion editor Palmer renders Clo’s world in vivid, gritty detail alongside sharp commentary on class, ambition, and women’s roles in the publishing industry." —Booklist

"For a novel to convincingly and all at once evoke Brideshead Revisted, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Six Degrees of Separation, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and yes, The Great Gatsby (as well, somehow, as The Sorrows of Young Werther) is several feats—of storytelling panache, of plot architecture, of thematic cohesion, and of provocative inquiry into the human heart. This thrilling, page turning, and deeply absorbing novel is an anthropological treatise on a lost New York at just slightly past the peak of American capitalism—fin de siecle indulgence shackled to an anxious expense account. A love letter to and post-mortem of the magazine industry, Workhorse beautifully captures not just the medieval and arcane pressure on women to achieve distinction amidst male control of the levers of power, but also the ever-widening gap between the soaring masters of the universe and their strained, human buttresses. The tensions between personal lives and career aspirations spring vividly to life here, as women find their ways professionally at great personal cost, trying to retain core values in a world that operates under a ruthless, Darwinian logic. Emerging from the constant testing of the narrator’s mettle is an ode to friendship and an argument for self-knowledge as the greatest power of all." —Matthew Thomas, New York Times-bestselling author of We Are Not Ourselves


“The walls have ears—and eyes and a steel-trap memory. Vogue veteran Caroline Palmer has concocted a heady brew of nostalgia and melancholia in Workhorse, resurrecting a magazine yesterworld of prima donnas, petty cash drawers, and petty grievances. Giddyap!” —Lauren Mechling, author of How Could She and coauthor of The Memo

"This book! The best thing I've read this year by far. It's Prep meets The Devil Wears Prada meets The Goldfinch. Funny, tender, but with so many thrillingly dark moments. I've been telling everyone I know about it. Everyone is going to be absolutely obsessed with Clo and her brutal world as she tries to fold herself to become the 'right' kind of girl. OBSESSED." —Heather Darwent, author of The Things We Do to our Friends