Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

The dark literary debut 2024 workplace novel for fans of Severance


'Trippy, incisive, riotously funny' ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN

'[An] insightfully nightmarish parable ' HALLE BUTLER

'A stunner' NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH

'Luminous ... as if George Saunders infiltrated the Severance writers' room' WASHINGTON POST

Klappentext:

'Trippy, incisive, riotously funny' ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN

'[An] insightfully nightmarish parable ' HALLE BUTLER

'A stunner' NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH

'Luminous ... as if George Saunders infiltrated the Severance writers' room' WASHINGTON POST

A work place novel. A love story. A dream you can't wake from...

Jonathan Abernathy is a loser. Unemployed and behind on his student loan repayments, the only thing Abernathy has in abundance is debt.

When a secretive government loan forgiveness programme offers him a job he can literally do in his sleep, Abernathy thinks he's found his big break. Hired as a dream auditor, he finds himself entering the dreams of white-collar workers to flag their anxieties for removal at night so they'll be more productive in the day. If Abernathy can at least appear competent, might he have a chance at a new life?

As Abe rnathy tries to find his footing in this new gig, reality and morality begin to warp around him. Soon, the lines between life and work, right and wrong, and even sleep and consciousness, have blurred and Abernathy begins to wonder just what he might have signed away...

Wildly imaginative, laced with black humour and full of close-to-the-bone truths, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is the cult workplace novel that's like nothing else you've read before.

'Surrealist ... A scathing critique of capitalism' TIME

'Imagine the movie Inception, but populated by the middle-management workers in David Graeber's book Bullshit Jobs' NEW YORK TIMES

'An excitingly original writer, inventing much needed and killingly funny satires for contemporary work and dreams of success' HOLLY PESTER

'A revelation' HILARY LEICHTER

'An origina l mind brimming over with invention' BEN MARCUS

'An exuberant, poignant, freewheeling debut ... very funny' JEFF VANDERMEER

'The spiritual sibling of Severance, but creepier' LITERARY HUB

Rezension:

'Molly McGhee is a fearlessly inventive and exquisitely poised writer, one who knows how to aim right at the jugular ... trippy, incisive, and, most importantly, riotously funny' Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine

'Here's an original mind brimming over with invention and comic ferocity and a new world sensibility that serves to remind us what good hands the future of literature is in' Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet

'Molly McGhee's luminary imagination makes this debut a wonder. Precision, humor, heart, this is a stunner' Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars

'In the light of this insightfully nightmarish parable of the pervasive ravages of debt, Abernathy's optimism, and the serene pace of McGhee's prose, are stone cold chilling' Halle Butler, author of The New Me

'An exuberant, poignant, freewheeling debut full of complication and surprise ... ver y funny' Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation

'The fiction of Molly McGhee is funny, freaky, intellectually bold and always from the heart' Sam Lipsyte, author of The Ask

'Welcome to the somnambulatory prose of Molly McGhee, where vivid nightmares and lucid tender dreams live side by side. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is a revelation ... There's nothing like it, awake or asleep or anywhere in between' Hilary Leichter, author of Temporary

'Lively, vacillating between humor and heartbreak at breakneck speeds, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is the rare novel that truly feels like it could've only been written by a single brilliant mind' Jean Kyoung Frazier author of Pizza Girl

'A deeply humane novel ... McGhee is a marvellous chronicler of the fantastic, the perverse, and the sublime' Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog