Tamara Shopsin

This is a delightfully quirky book about Claire, who gets a job at TekServe, a Mac repair store in NYC in the 1990s. TekServe really existed, so the book is loosely based on facts. Ostensibly, this is the story of Claire learning to fix printers and becoming obsessed with fixing printers. There really isn't much of a storyline, though - really, this book is a tour of the TekServe store full of mini-biographies of the people who work there. Sometimes the narrative is interrupted by little conversations between the parts of the printers the characters are fixing: these little interludes are very charming.

I lived in NYC in the early 2000s, and my partner was pretty involved in the tech scene at the time, and worked for a legendary ISP whose offices were quite close to TekServe. Reading this book brought back so many memories. Shopsin perfectly captures the exuberance and weirdness of the 90s NYC tech scene.… (mais)

An engaging, slightly quirky story of New York City in the 1990s. Macs were emerging and were repaired at Tekserve, which started in an apartment before expanding into various larger locations along 23rd Street.

A young woman named Claire gets a job there and is swiftly promoted from intake to Printer repair. Tekserve is caring and operates with integrity. "Joel says the worst thing on earth is to fix a printer and have it come back within the year broken again. Claire feels this truth in her bones."

There are times in the story when the printers are alive, the parts talking to each other, mainly discussing various points of philosphy. Claire has conicidentally, or not, audited philosphy classes at Columbia with an altered student ID she found. A warm-hearted story of a girl finding her place in the city.… (mais)