Reed’s matter-of-fact memoir features tempting sides of Italian food, fashion, and wine. Her book’s main course is not only the ride-or-die job; it’s also a meditation on approaching midlife and the need for true friendship and love.
Reed’s down-to-earth memoir is a wistful insider’s view of working in a high-powered restaurant job in New York. It will be popular among foodies and fans of business histories.
The fashion-magazine setting, the clicking of high heels, the dropping of designer names will be familiar to fans of Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada (2003), but Workhorse is a far darker tale and invites comparisons to a different malefactor: the talented Mr. Ripley ... Workhorse is far longer than it needs to be. That goes double for Clo’s self-loathing, self-justifying interior monologues. But Ms. Palmer nails the details of life at a fashion magazine
... the candor of this memoir is just one sign of Reed's personal transformation—a long, painful coming-of-age that led her to confront and break patterns that could have made her miserable for the rest of her life ... A generously detailed, juicy restaurant industry tell-all and a cautionary tale for young workaholics.
... exhilarating if perplexing ... there’s surprisingly little talk of food and wine ... Her horror as men leapt to B&B’s defense lends resonance to her experience in a way that her earlier attempts to analyze a job that allowed her to sit 'squarely in the fray of someone else’s life' never quite do. While it offers a juicy behind-the-scenes look at the high life, it’s difficult not to see this as a dark morality tale.
