Author: Calvin Kasulke
Publisher: Doubleday
Genre: Humor / Literary Fiction
Publication Date: August 31, 2021
Book Description: A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF.
“An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.”–Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
Told entirely through clever and captivating Slack messages, this irresistible, relatable satire of both virtual work and contemporary life is The Office for a new world.
Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York–based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company’s internal Slack channels—at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it’s an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald’s productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from . . . wherever he says he is.
Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.
Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?
In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity…and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.
Rating: 4 Stars
Review: This quirky book was so much fun to read. Told entirely in Slack messages, the author really nailed working in a corporate environment, and I speak from experience.
Gerald is a mid-level employee working at A NYC PR firm. They have a very lax work from home policy. However, one day Gerald swaps consciousness with Slackbot. He is comatose, but highly productive in the Slack platform, so everyone thinks this is a joke, and does not think anything of it.
We meet all the other co-workers with all their private conversations, and group conversations. Lot’s of inside jokes, which you would expect any work group would have. They are all working on a campaign for a dog food company that has issues with poisoning dogs.
There are fights over workspaces, sexual acts that cause broken furniture. They also want to know why Gerald always gets to work from home. Eventually Pradeep saves the day in more ways than one.
This book can rival Office Space. I loved it so much. Yes, it is totally over the top, but the author just captured it so well what is like to work today when collaboration tools that are forced upon all of us.
Thank you NetGalley and Doubleday for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Obsessed Bookaholic 