The Mezzanine : Book review

Book Review 

 

 Title: The Mezzanine

Author: Nicholson Baker

Genre: Fiction

 

The Mezzanine chronicles the mundanity of everyday life of a twenty something office goer and what happens during his office lunch break. 

 

Meet our protagonist-.Howie. While riding the escalator to the Mezzanine floor, he recollects the events occurred that day. His main goal is to get new shoe laces for himself and during this time, he gets lost in his thoughts about milk cartons, straws, office colleagues, his experience at the pharmacy and the men’s room. While he mulls over these observations, he realizes that he is largely influenced by his childhood. 

 

The specialty of this book is mainly the protagonists stream of consciousness. The author manages to get the readers into the interiority of this character. It’s interesting to observe how Howie categorizes his thoughts in a scientific manner. People tend to have fleeting thoughts but not all of them spent a lot of time over them in the manner Howie does.

 

 Beneath his thoughts, you get an idea of how the character feels trapped in the rigmarole of office life, the small talk, superficiality, capitalism and certain clichés. It’s interesting how the author manages to portray a relationship with objects that we use every day but don’t really think too much about. Such as straws or milk cartons. While the plot isn’t necessarily concrete, the book can be appreciated on a craft level such as the usage of footnotes, characterization and interiority. 

 

The Mezzanine is an engaging read, sometimes overwhelming but interesting nevertheless.

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