(no subject)
Dec. 11th, 2024 11:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI am a deeply basic individual who loves surrealist workplace horror-satire about the evils of capitalism, and Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind lands squarely within this genre: it's about an anxious young man with crushing debt and a desperation to please who picks up a new job working for a mysterious agency that removes stress factors from people's dreams in order to increase their labor efficiency.
Alas! his new job, which seems initially like a pathway out of the financial downward spiral that's been drowning him in slow motion, turns out to be bad for both him and everyone he knows. This is very clear from the beginning and is repeatedly foreshadowed -- there are several wistful sequences of 'alas! had Jonathan done x at y time, and had a genuine conversation with z, perhaps things would have gone this, better way. however --' in ways that didn't quite work for me; I think I would have enjoyed this book completely wholeheartedly as a novella, but as a full novel I sort of felt like it perhaps ran out of things to tell me sooner than it ran out of pages.
But I also, frankly, have been really spoiled for good surrealist workplace horror-satire by friends who are absurdly talented at evoking it (sometimes just by telling me about something that happened in their day-to-day life! at their startup!) and it is not really Jonathan Abernathy's fault that the tone of this book tilted more dreamy and wistful, and less bitingly detailed and sharp in the way that I personally prefer it. So if you, too, love surrealist workplace horror-satire, it may well be worth giving this book a go, and I think it's even odds that it will scratch the itch!
Alas! his new job, which seems initially like a pathway out of the financial downward spiral that's been drowning him in slow motion, turns out to be bad for both him and everyone he knows. This is very clear from the beginning and is repeatedly foreshadowed -- there are several wistful sequences of 'alas! had Jonathan done x at y time, and had a genuine conversation with z, perhaps things would have gone this, better way. however --' in ways that didn't quite work for me; I think I would have enjoyed this book completely wholeheartedly as a novella, but as a full novel I sort of felt like it perhaps ran out of things to tell me sooner than it ran out of pages.
But I also, frankly, have been really spoiled for good surrealist workplace horror-satire by friends who are absurdly talented at evoking it (sometimes just by telling me about something that happened in their day-to-day life! at their startup!) and it is not really Jonathan Abernathy's fault that the tone of this book tilted more dreamy and wistful, and less bitingly detailed and sharp in the way that I personally prefer it. So if you, too, love surrealist workplace horror-satire, it may well be worth giving this book a go, and I think it's even odds that it will scratch the itch!
no subject
Date: 2024-12-14 08:11 pm (UTC)Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one if you read it!