The End of My Career by Martha Grover
The End of My Career by Martha Grover
In her new memoir, Martha Grover goes undercover. Whether cleaning houses or looking for love, she peels back the surfaces of ordinary moments and reveals a life both hilarious and traumatic. The End of My Career sees Grover living with her parents again as she enters her late thirties, reconciling the pleasures and perils of being female, chronically ill, and subsisting on menial labor at the edge of an increasingly unaffordable city. Desperate for stable work, she gets hired as a state-sanctioned private investigator looking into shady workers’ comp claims—even while she herself fights in court for her own disability settlement. Angry and heartbroken, brimming with the outrageous contradictions of the modern world, The End of My Career embodies the comic nightmare of our times.
Paperback: 240 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9836327-5-7
Published: July 28, 2016
Dimensions: 5 x 0.6 x 7.75 inches
The End of My Career is a 2017 finalist for the Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction! Judge Maggie Nelson selected Martha's memoir along with books by Walidah Imarisha and Carrie Brownstein.
Praise for Martha Grover and The End of My Career:
“With immense vulnerability, wit and insight, [Grover] writes about so much — money, sex, chronic illness, gentrification and her jobs cleaning houses, investigating insurance claims and working in a cheese shop, among other things.”
—Cheryl Strayed, in the New York Times Book Review, on her “favorite book no one has heard of”
"I devoured Martha Grover's The End of My Career on the plane from Portland to San Francisco. Frank, funny, sad at times--beautifully observed. Basically, it doesn't matter what she writes, I'm gonna want to read it. She's that kind of writer."
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Borne
"In a style one might describe as raucously droll, Grover takes the decidedly mundane and rotates in the light of her dead-aim wit. Here’s one page in entirety, which combines a Lydia Davis-esque minimalism with Grover’s wry feminism: “I ask my father to read an article about male entitlement and emotional labor. ‘Can you just tell me what it says?’ he says.” The universe here sketched—punctuated by cleaning jobs, so-so sex, the toll of chronic illness, the growing seep of the internet into our lives—is both original and timely, and Grover is a curious, companionable guide throughout."
—Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
"Martha Grover is the voice of Portland right now.”
—Portland Mercury fall arts guide, Aug 31, 2016
"If Martha Grover were to take a normal shit she would tell you. And it would be cause for celebration."
—Willamette Week
"My favorite living writer.”
—Bud Smith, author of F250
“Grover is funny as hell.”
—SF Weekly
“Wry, observant … a natural storyteller.”
—The Oregonian
“Grover is a genius … some part of me always feels that this is everybody’s autobiography. This is what it means to fiercely love a changing self.”
—Ariel Gore, author of The End of Eve
"This is a confident, generous, funny, and celebratory book. I wish I could read more like it."
—Emily Kendal Frey, author of Sorrow Arrow
“A totally fascinating window into what it’s like to be young and sick.”
—Portland Mercury
