Lily Meyer
The Mundane and Alienated Life of a Freelancer
Lily Meyer reviews Kavita Bedford’s Friends and Dark Shapes, looking at how the novel’s portrayal of freelancing resonates with her own position as a freelancer in the gig economy era.
Bedford is refreshingly committed to portraying writing not as a calling or craft but as work. She shows freelance writing as a form of what the journalist Sarah Jaffe, in her recent book Work Won’t Love You Back, calls 'hope labour': toil performed in the hope of stability, prestige, and fulfilment down the line...Both she and her narrator understand well that hope labour’s promise is often false.