Iris Finch is working in an office, but she's not privy to the product or service being offered; her boss seems harried, then panicked, then confident, and may have cut a trap door into the floor behind his desk. She's unsure about other employees--when they might show up, whether they still work there, whether they ever did. Her relationships are limited to a friend who keeps pushing blind dates and a brother who bore witness to a tragic accident in childhood and is forever escaping through trap doors of his own. Across the hall from Iris's office suite, another office has--maybe--been coopted by one man, who is living there and converting the space into something entirely un-office-like.
In Radio Iris, Anne-Marie Kinney corrals this heady mix of mysterious circumstances into a first novel with aplomb, as Iris finds comfort in the small details of her existence, even as that existence unravels. Some of the confusion is resolved, to varying degrees, while other questions leads to more mystery. Whether read as a parable about the modern workplace, an "Alice in Wonderland" fable or a portrait of an existential crisis that starts within Iris but spreads outward, the conclusion is as haunting as could be. --Matthew Tiffany, counselor, writer for Condalmo