Nice Work is not a memoir but an investigation, of sorts, into work. Jana Wendt, who, after years of television deadlines, must know something about work, spends time with a range of people, some volunteer, some paid, some with all-consuming jobs, to reveal what their day-to-day responsibilities actually are.

Her prose is clear and succinct, with each job, or interview, forming a chapter. Many of the chapters do highlight hidden aspects of the ‘work’ but the best of the chapters, the priest, the forensic anthropologist, the sculptor and the volunteers, work because Wendt writes about her subject’s lives as much as their work. (Perhaps because their jobs are their lives?)

Wendt could probably have written a book about each of these people, particularly the forensic pathologist and the volunteers, with the result that many of the chapters feel as though they end abruptly. But the interviews are charming and do offer insight into a vast range of complex roles within our community that we often just don’t wonder about.