Nice Work by David Lodge. Reviewed by Tolase Olatinwo

Nice work is an amusing work of fiction that revolves around two main characters: Vic Wilcox – a 46-year-old family man and Managing Director of a casting and engineering company and Robyn Penrose – a 33-year old trendy feminist university lecturer in English Literature.

The two characters live and work only a few miles apart but are unaware of each other’s existence in Rummidge, a small fictional city, until fate brings them together in 1986. They have different ideologies, interests, and lifestyle but seem to share the same worries about their work and personal relationship. Vic finds that “worries streak towards him like enemy spaceships”. His main worry, however, is maintaining profit margins in a competitive industry while keeping overhead and other costs to a minimum. Vic also has to content with family issues: his deteriorating relationship with his wife and increasingly delinquent children. Robyn, on the other hand, is increasingly concerned about her temporary her temporary teaching job even though she is satisfied that she is highly valued by her colleagues. “…[T]he of her career was a constant background worry as the days and weeks of her appointment at [University of] Rummidge ticked away like a taxi meter. Another was her relationship with Charles”.

Robyn and Vic meet through a Shadow Scheme between the university and Vic’s company. Initially, there is tension and a certain dislike between the two. Vic had never been inside the university and saw it “…as a small city-state, an academic Vatican, from which he keeps his distance, both intimidated by and disapproving of its air of privileged detachment”. He even regards Robyn shadowing him as irrelevant – “a ludicrous mistake, or else a calculated insult”. Robyn , on the other hand, had never been inside a factory before and saw “the factory as the most terrible place she had ever been in her life”

Robyn’s inexperience and naïve understanding of the industry becomes evident when her attempts to forestall the dismissal of Danny Ram, an Asian employee, sparks off an industrial dispute between the Asian factory workers and the management. Fortunately, the dispute is resolved through skilful negotiations which not only guarantee Danny Ram his job but also give the workers some additional benefits. Even though Robyn’s actions could have jeorpardised the entire operations of the factory, her intervention leads to an improvement in communications between the shop floor and the management.

Vic, in turn, shadows Robyn at work and is able to develop a better understanding and appreciation of the challenges she faces at work. In the end, they both make an ideological shift and develop a broader perspective that takes them beyond the protective university system and the cut throat competition of the industrial world.