Hammer Head

October 20, 2014
A Boston newspaperwoman transformed herself into a carpenter’s assistant and found new satisfaction working with her hands rather than molding words. In her light narrative, in which the former classics major wisely and sparingly employs allusions to Ovid and Vitruvius, MacLaughlin recounts her quirky journey, after seven years at the Phoenix, to landing an improbable job at age 30 as assistant to the highly trained carpenter, Mary, a petite, self-described “43-year-old married lesbian.” Mary’s patience and encouragement on numerous jobs in the Boston area, like kitchen and bathroom renovations, moving walls, tiling and ripping out floors and stairs, over many seasons with MacLaughlin
allowed the author to grow and learn and even master carpentry work on her own. The author quotes Gabriel García Márquez calling literature “nothing but carpentry.... With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood,” yet Márquez had actually never worked with wood, while the author finds enormous release in hands-on labor free of words. Moreover, women make up only about 2% of the male-dominated profession of carpenter, MacLaughlin cites, thus rendering enormous interest in this painstaking work so lovingly delineated.

February 15, 2015
As she closed in on 30, MacLaughlin took a long look at how her arts-reporter job had morphed into the soul-deadening work of website managing editor (scrolling, dragging, clicking) and realized she had to make a change, or risk losing her mind. Quitting was nothing compared to the courage required in replying to a Craigslist ad for a carpenter's apprenticea job for which her sole qualifications were common sense and a willingness to lug crap. Surprisingly, MacLaughlin was hired and now, years later, enjoys a most unexpected career. All of this makes for perfect memoir fodder, but the author goes much deeper than expected, with thoughtful musings on workplace relationships formed through the art of getting a job done well, including her friendship with her boss, Mary, an impressively capable and patient taskmaster. MacLaughlin plumbs her journalistic past for literary and philosophical references, all well placed amid tales of installing lazy Susans and laying tile. Books groups will love this engaging and entertaining chronicle and want more from this multitalented writer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

Starred review from June 1, 2015

Whiling away her days as a journalist at the Boston Phoenix, MacLaughlin watches her industry shift from respecting deadlines to prizing page clicks. After having spent most of her 20s working from a computer chair, she decides to quit in favor of a more hands-on vocation: carpenter's assistant. MacLaughlin's memoir traces her first years apprenticing for Mary, a skilled craftswoman who takes the author under her wing despite her lack of training. VERDICT Because of MacLaughin's years of experience as a writer, the crown molding on her story is her effortless blending of literary craft with woodcraft. [See Memoir, 12/16/14; ow.ly/MBEsA.]--ES

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2014
A former journalist tells the story of how a longing to "engage with the tangible, to do work that resulted in something I could touch" led to an unexpectedly fulfilling career as a carpenter. As she neared 30, former Boston Phoenix editor MacLaughlin came to the painful realization that the job she once thought was "the coolest job in the world" no longer satisfied her. The woman who had lucked into a job straight out of college now stirred with a powerful desire for "the wholesale altering of life as [she'd] been living it." So she quit her newspaper job and answered a Craigslist advertisement for a carpenter's assistant. The carpenter doing the search, also a woman, took a chance and hired MacLaughlin, despite her total lack of experience. Soon, the former journalist who had spent her entire working life sitting in front of a computer screen was actively using her body and hands to transform residential living spaces. Learning how to use tools like tape measures, hammers, saws and drills was as challenging as coming to terms with the desexualizing nature of a profession overwhelmingly dominated by men. For the first time in her life, MacLaughlin realized just how "attached to [her] femininity" she really was. Through the screw-ups, successes and fallow periods that left her questioning her decision to leave a steady job, the author gained new confidence, both as a woman and a carpenter. She also discovered unexpected pleasure in dissolving "into something greater than" herself. MacLaughlin's work let her connect to the physical world in ways that writing-which only touched the surface of things through the "ghosty and mutable" medium of words-could not. More than that, it allowed her to "feel more honest, more useful, and more used." A surprisingly thoughtful book about taking chances and finding joy in change.

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