Memoir
Paperback, 240 pages
Published July 2016
ISBN13: 9780983632757

FINALIST FOR THE OREGON BOOK AWARD IN CREATIVE NONFICTION

“With immense vulnerability, wit and insight, [Grover] writes about so much — money, sex, chronic illness, gentrification and her jobs cleaning houses, investigating insurance claims and working in a cheese shop, among other things.”
—Cheryl Strayed, author of WILD

In this memoir, Martha Grover goes undercover. Whether cleaning houses or looking for love, she peels back the surfaces of ordinary moments and reveals a life both hilarious and traumatic. The End of My Career sees Grover living with her parents again as she enters her late thirties, reconciling the pleasures and perils of being female, chronically ill, and subsisting on menial labor at the edge of an increasingly unaffordable city. Desperate for stable work, she gets hired as a state-sanctioned private investigator looking into shady workers’ comp claims—even while she herself fights in court for her own disability settlement. Angry and heartbroken, brimming with the outrageous contradictions of the modern world, The End of My Career embodies the comic nightmare of our times.