Molly McGhee

"A company always has multiple revenue streams. If you can't easily identify at least two, it's likely you're one of them." (page p214)

The collection of writers who wrote the blurbs sold this one to me. Usually, I don't need to read blurbs for a book, really just the names will tell me all I need to know. Ah, Jonathan Abernathy. It's all in the title. He tries! He tries so hard! And he has so much up against him! Another possible title could be 'Jonathan Abernathy You Are Naive" but I do see him as kind, even when he does bad things. The book here skewers labor and poverty and that endless hamster wheel. All while throwing in a surreal plot about auditing dreams to take out anxiety and depression to create more productive workers. The book is dedicated to "the forgotten who have been worked to death" so that just immediately hits hard when you open the book. It just really hits hard -- a book about labor, poverty, capitalism, that it really is a privilege to spend time in fiction, in books. So many people are working hard every day of their life to have a chance to give time or energy to something like literature, so it makes me appreciate books all the more, AND all the people who are out there working away at the hard jobs, whether physically or mentally. To tie so much about WORK to a plotline that is so bizarre, like dream auditing, is also an interesting feat. I love the realism of capitalism mixed with the bonkers plotline. So much is brilliantly, yet subtly, funnily said here! I *think* this is a systems novel? Though I haven't read many of them, so I can't say for sure. I really like McGhee's writing style, so I will be eagerly waiting for what she writes next. I would set this on the shelf beside 'The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida' by Shehan Karunatilaka and 'Subdivision' by J. Robert Lennon and 'The Visitors' by Jessi Jezewska Stevens and 'Severance' by Ling Ma.… (meer)