Joy

'Did she jump? Did she fall? Will she wake?' On a Friday afternoon talented young lawyer Joy Stephens plummets forty feet onto a marble floor while addressing her colleagues. In the shadow of this baffling event, the lives of those closest to her begin to collide and change in dangerous ways. There is Dennis, her disgraced husband, who finds consolation in books; her colleague Peter, whose refuge is a strange mix of hedonism and hard work; Barbara, Joy's PA, who'd be content if only she could get away and be with her sister in New York; and Samir, Joy's hygiene-obsessed personal trainer, who escapes into exercise routines and other, stranger rituals. In a sparkling glass office in London's Square Mile - a place bursting with flirtations, water-cooler confrontations and dangerous amounts of abject boredom - each of them is forced to question what they've witnessed, and to confront past moments that have defined Joy's life, as well as their own. JOY is an inventive, ambitious and absorbing novel about pleasure, love, loss, and work.