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There are currently 26 member reviews
for The Cleaner
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Lmalone
It wanted to be clever
Overall I found this book to be rather frustrating. It had a main story line of course and a few secondary story lines that it was trying to pull in but I feel like I was left wanting more resolution on two of the three.
The main character was someone who at first I thought would be very interesting and entertaining but by the end of the book I felt that she was petty and self-important. She alone knew what was right for everyone and everyone needed to follow her rules, obey her wishes and play her game even though most of them had no idea they were part of her game at all. And if you didn't play along the consequences range from petty and juvenile to extreme. Only once did her behavior make her feel bad and it was about a plant not a person. The complete and total invasion of privacy of her clients and her thinking she was completely justified in doing that was disturbing and I'm someone who has my office cleaned twice a week. Maybe it's just because that hit me on a different level but I couldn't imagine the person I know coming into my office and rifling through all my drawers and reading my private emails as though they were entitled to that part of my life.
The secondary story lines weren't very interesting other than her potential romance and it was a very difficult book for me because other than m there was not one single likable character in the entire book.
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ILENEM
Inventive, but...
As I started to read this book, I was intrigued by the inventive writing style. The author chooses to let the "cleaner" gives us her thoughts on her evening work and on the people who work in the office during the day. By the end of the book, my feelings are that the "cleaner" is a bit delusional in her thought process. While I found the writing to be interesting, the ending was rather banal. Not the best read for me.
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Gail G. (Hernando, FL)
Different
This book was not what I expected. It is an unusual format. There are no chapters at all and is simply a running account of the night shift cleaning lady at a large office building. She has the idea that she controls what happens with the company and it's employees. She seems very needy and lonely, but very self absorbed. I found it extremely boring and repetitive. Would not recommend.
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Cheryl R. (Jeannette, PA)
No one sees
What you see isn't always what you get. The night shift cleaner fills her life by "taking care" of the people who work on the fourth floor, her floor. She realizes that she is doing this in the dark of night without them knowing what is happening. But she doesn't realize that she is in the dark too. She makes a day visit and realizes that her relationships are shadows.
I didn't feel like the story had an ending. Life just went on. Maybe that's the point.
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Barbara C. (Riverside, CA)
Book had great start!
The cleaner had very strong opinions on everything in the office and manipulated that world in order to help. Difficult to not give away too much in review. The middle dragged in my opinion. Had to finish it, in order to find out what finally happened to cleaner. She had totally wrapped herself up in the lives of the office workers. An aside, the plural pronoun for M annoyed me, no end.
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Cathie D. (Pelham, NH)
Nothing mysterious
What a strange book. The Cleaner is a nameless person. In fact, nobody in the book has names. The security person is known as "L" and the delivery person is known as either "they/them/their" or "M".
The Cleaner works at night cleaning the offices and cubes of workers in an office building. "I watch over everyone. Sometimes they make the wrong decisions, and I help them see their mistakes. They just need someone to force them to do the right thing."
Based on things she finds on the desks and in the desk drawers, she comes up with nicknames for the employees. Such as Yarn Guy (he has spools of yarn in a drawer), Mr. Buff (he has several containers of protein powders in a drawer), Sad Intern (self-help books, probiotics, dry shampoo) and Scissors Guy (he has several scissors). She takes things from the desks and puts them on other people's desks. Sometimes she brings things in to leave on desks. She even accesses the CEO's computer.
This is labeled as a mystery/thriller, but I didn't get any suspense out or mystery out of this book. I kept waiting for something to happen but all she does is clean and move things from desk to desk.
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Theresa P. (Arkport, NY)
I tried
I am reluctant to say that I did not have a good opinion on this book. The description sounded very interesting, but I could not develop an interest in the story as it unfolded. I started to want the cleaner to stop some of her cleaning practices, to start being more in touch with other people, and not to be the person she was. It is one of the very few books I ever gave up reading.
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