The Expansion Project
Ben Pester
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From the publisher
Plans for the expansion of the Capmeadow Business Park are in full swing – its mission is to become the greatest business park in the region. Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee, loses his daughter at ‘bring your daughter to work day’. He raises the alarm, and his colleagues rush to help him find her. Eventually, after no sign of her is found, it transpires she was never there. And yet, as time goes on, Tom still cannot reconcile that she is really at home. Refusing to accept that she is safe, Tom continues to search for her in the maze of corridors and impossible multi-dimensional spaces that make up his place of work…
Because Capmeadow is expanding in unexpected ways, a Liaison Officer becomes the central focus for complaints about how the expansion is impacting the lives of the employees – unexpected buildings, years-long business days, cursed farmers’ markets, and corridors of the mind are draining the life from Tom and everyone he works with.
Years pass, and Tom remains at the company, convinced he is in the presence of his now adult daughter. But has he judged it correctly? And can anything go back to the way it was??
‘A tour de force in surrealist comedy... The Expansion Project is fixated on technology, anxiety and work - common subjects in contemporary literature, yet in Pester's voice they are rendered fresh, sublime and eerie. He could be described, in part, as a comic descendant of J.G. Ballard, or an English version of the great absurdist Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal... Pester is a talented writer of the surreal... A novel about dislocation that feels dislocating. It should serve as an ominous warning to us all’ – Camilla Grudova, Sunday Telegraph
‘Surreal and unsettling... Pester's deceptively lucid prose mocks office platitudes but also gets to the crux of the loneliness and alienation bred by corporate language and spaces... With a steely commitment to its outlandish form and plot, Pester's novel is as nebulous, mind-bending and delightfully strange as the workplace it describes’ – Observer
‘This ambitious debut skewers the absurdities of office life and bureaucracy with sharp, surreal wit... Crackles with invention... Pester has an ear for deadpan absurdity... Exhilaratingly weird’ – Daily Mail