i think if you have ever worked in an office you will understand the mild obsession with that One printer that refuses to work no matter how many times IT “fixes” it. i don’t think i’ve ever had a mild obsession with befriending a printer.

the narrator of this book feels the same way about a printer as i do when i have to leave my dog at home for more than like 5 minutes. like i know i can’t take my dog everywhere but leaving her makes me feel like a bad parent (now say this sentence again but change dog for printer)

i appreciate i guess the author trying to get across points on loneliness and corporate jobs and feeling like a horrible cog in a system that doesn’t care about you. and sections of this book would make excellent protest banners but other sections made me sleepy (like fall asleep on a Dutch pavement sleepy which i did in 2018 but not for the same reason this narrator did)

the book did feel monotonous for a while (which may have been intentional?) so i was both glad & confused when a sub-plot regarding traumatic teen experiences showed up out of nowhere. i always love to try and read between the lines and guess where sub-plots are going but it's difficult to do when it feels ehlers danlos levels of disjointed.

and then suddenly we get to the printers section. and suddenly a very weird pessimistic novel becomes a sweet almost moving ode to friendship and feeling seen.

if you love a weird girl book i would for sure give it a try!! maybe i am just less weird than i thought

This book was hilarious, and a little bit absurd and carefully and eccentrically captivated what it means to work in a corporate space. Will definitely be recommending.

Hard Copy is a novel about a young woman who makes friends with a printer, only to be separated from it. A customer service assistant at a startup spends her days printing in a little room, and talking to the printer. Unfortunately, her colleagues can hear these conversations, and she is placed on leave for burnout, where she is separated from her printer, and tries to look for purpose to her life.

This is the kind of book where the concept—"girl meets printer"—draws you in, and it does deliver on this, with a story of a protagonist who is obsessed with her work printer to give meaning to her tedious job, and a section that is from the perspective of the printer. The non-printer-narrated parts also explore her childhood in a working class area and how she might have come to be the anxious, stress-allergic person that she now is. There's a commentary on the modern world of work and the impact of class and status upon this that runs through the novel, with the absurd printer elements taking this in a slightly different direction to other books about an anxious narrator doing a tedious job.

Though I enjoyed reading Hard Copy, I found the ending was a bit disappointing, and generally I feel like the book, and especially the fourth section which comes after the part narrated by the printer, could've been much weirder, as the blurb felt like it was going to be. I'm sure some people will find the printer element weird enough, but for me, I felt like it could've delved deeper, and also maybe deconstructed the anxious narrator a bit more. Nonetheless, this sits nicely amongst absurd workplace novels that shine a light to modern life and books about millennials falling apart, so fans of those will probably enjoy it.

No, you didn't read it wrong - Fien Veldman has done the unimaginable and written a novel about one office printer's most inner thoughts.

I know, right?

Predictably, the utterly bizarre premise worked - I simply had to see what's hiding between the covers, and whether it lives up to the hype.

Both immensely entertaining and unexpectedly philosophical, the quality of this quirky fiction gem surprised me.

An exciting debut by a promising Dutch author set to be published in June 2024, Hard Copy follows an unnamed customer service assistant who spends days upon days printing letters. Her only friend - the office printer.

A friend, really, you ask? Yes. Hidden in an isolated office space with no colleagues in sight, the protagonist begins sharing her thoughts and ideas with the machine.

When diagnosed with burnout and placed on leave, the protagonist is in for a shock. Drawing parallels between the way people treat other people and the inanimate objects that serve them, she uses the newly found freedom to explore the depth of her loneliness.

Quiet contemplation is central to the plot, touching upon societal and gender norms. Are women worth less? Are men inherently fragile? How do we learn our place, and will it ever change?

Halfway through the book, the printer - a machine, an office supply, a friend - shares its part of the story. Tender and full of affection towards those who care, this unique perspective is set to inspire.

While navigating the lows of an unforeseen redundancy following her burnout diagnosis, the protagonist finds herself with no prospects. What's to become of her life? Given the space and time to reflect on her identity, she reconsiders the point of her existence - and the truth of her profound findings shines through every word.

Hard Copy offers a one-of-a-kind experience, a controversial angle of thinking about class, culture and the technology that increasingly becomes a part of our lives - and it's well worth a read.

If you've yet to read this, do yourself a favour and get on it.

There were definitely promising moment to this novel, somewhat relatable with an anxious and overthinking protagonist but this wasn't enough to keep me entertained all the way through.

I love a quiet, plotless novel but unfortunately this one was just too slow.

Here we follow an unnamed customer service assistant as she tries to track down a missing parcel, navigates office life, overthinks everything, is allergic to over exertion (literally) and…falls in love with her printer.

Throughout we also have parts in italics that shed light on her background and past which were the parts I found most interesting.

I really related to this extremely anxious, socially awkward main character but the book as a whole just felt a little underwhelming.

Will definitely check out more from this author in the future if their work is translated into english though!

If you like socially awkward protagonists who are a bit bonkers, which I do, and also novels that are set in the workplace, then Hard Copy by Fien Veldman is an enjoyable read.

There are flashes of fun in this book, in which an anxious, ‘stress-allergic’ young worker develops an obsession with her workplace printer.
Unfortunately, despite some promising moments it didn’t really do anything for me; I did enjoy a change of perspective in the third act, and flashbacks to a dark moment in the protagonist’s childhood worked to provide a welcome shift from the monotony of the workplace.
Otherwise, it was all a little too disjointed and odd to be any more than ‘OK’, with certain threads left hanging, unexplored