Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind
Molly McGhee
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From the publisher
Trippy, incisive and riotously funny’ Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
‘Precision, humour, heart, this is a stunner’ Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, bestselling author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
‘Luminous … as if George Saunders infiltrated the Severance writers’ room’ Washington Post
An original and darkly funny debut novel about work, debt and how we live now, from a thrilling new voice in fiction.
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 Abernathy 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.
‘An original mind brimming over with invention’ Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet
‘An insightfully nightmarish parable of the pervasive ravages of debt … Stone-cold chilling’ Halle Butler, author of The New Me
‘An exuberant, poignant, freewheeling debut full of complication and surprise … very funny’ Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation
‘Jonathan Abernathy makes a case for generosity, for the surplus of everyday life, the kind of savings that cannot be bought or sold … Debt can take on a life of it’s own, but when it’s really good – like Jonathan Abernathy – so can art’ Electric Lit
‘The spiritual sibling of Severance, but creepier’ Literary Hub
‘Surrealist … A scathing critique of capitalism’ Time
‘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 … A revelation’ Hilary Leichter, author of Temporary