The most interesting thing to me about this 1982 Heinlein novel is that its fairly shapeless narrative is not unlike some of the 21st century novels that I've found equally shapeless. I've often thought that many 21st century SF authors have lacked the ability to "up the stakes" for their characters, to make the characters' travails meaningful through involved conflict. Yet here's one of the authors from the Classic Era of American SF, and he's not doing any better.
There's no indication that Heinlein wanted to give main character Friday Jones anything but a series of intermittent small conflicts. In a future where America has become balkanized into separate states, Friday works as a courier for an undercover organization, whose boss, we'll later learn, is more or less her adoptive father. Friday doesn't know this, because she was a "test tube baby," grown from genetic material and tinkered with so that she has superior strength and speed in comparison to a female human. Neither capacity helps her when she's captured by a small group of enemy agents, who interrogate, torture and rape Friday. Given that Friday cannot conceive, the latter ignominy doesn't bother her that much. She's rescued by her fellow operatives, who wipe out most of Friday's captors-- which should signal instantly to the reader that Heinlein does not intend to make his heroine's detainment any big deal in the life of a secret agent.
Instead, her superior, whom she always calls "Boss" (and who apparently appeared in any earlier Heinlein story), briefly tries to convince her to become an assassin. If the reader thinks this was introduced for purposes of plot development, he should guess again, for after Friday demurs, the subject never comes up again. Friday goes on an "R and R" trip which, in essence, never properly ends, because the rest of the novel is just one sight-seeing episode after another, as Heinlein takes his heroine into various future-scenarios in order that he can make whatever witty analysis he cares to. (Not that the future-society holds together as a SF-concept, compared to famous Heinlein works like THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS.) She does hook up with Boss again for a while, who suddenly decides she ought to make a great researcher, and Friday does that job for a little while. Boss dies for some reason and his bequest reveals to Friday some history of her origins. There are a handful of action-scenes, but they're all very brief and, as I said, none of them lead to any major plot developments.
FRIDAY was nominated for (but did not win) both a Nebula and a Hugo, and that may be because the book's a good read in its meandering way, as long as one doesn't expect a lot. I found myself thinking of the novel as a *picaresque* tale, in that such novels are structurally loose and depend largely upon exposing the hero (or heroine) to a variety of situations until he or she eventually finds a stable home. Defoe's MOLL FLANDERS is one of the few works in this vein I've reviewed here, and I think Heinlein *meant* FRIDAY to be equally formless. I don't believe there were any direct quotes of Defoe's more famous novel in this book, but there's really no other work that has made famous a character with the first name "Friday." (Clearly Joe Friday does not count.)
Just to close with a snipe at another 21st-century work, I also finished 2015's THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL ANGRY PLANET by one Becky Chambers, and although that too is pretty formless, there was hardly anything intellectually bracing about it. Even weak Heinlein is still stronger stuff than most of the posers of recent years.
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