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Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

A Novel

Molly McGhee

$58.95

Hardback

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English
Minedition (imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc)
17 October 2023
"A Best Novel of 2023 - Electric Literature and Largehearted Boy
""The novel is a magical-realist office drama infused with millennial anomie, and McGhee’s canny, often bittersweetly hilarious prose reads as if George Saunders infiltrated the Severance writers’ room.""

—Rafael Frumkin, Washington Post

""This laugh-out-loud debut is a wildly imaginative, tender and piercing critique of the squeeze of capitalism."" —Xochitl Gonzalez, Good Morning America

""A scathing critique of capitalism that holds onto the humanity of its characters.""

—Laura Zornosa, TIME

Jonathan Abernathy is a self-proclaimed loser. . . he’s behind on his debts, has no prospects, no friends, and no ambitions. But when a government loan forgiveness program offers him a literal dream job, he thinks he’s found his big break. If he can appear to be competent at his new job, entering the minds of middle class workers while they sleep and removing the unsavory detritus of their waking lives from their unconscious, he might have a chance at a new life. As Abernathy finds his footing in this role, reality and morality begin to warp around him. Soon, the lines between life and work, love and hate, right and wrong, even sleep and consciousness, begin to blur.

Molly McGhee touches on themes most people know all too well—the relentlessly crushing weight of debt, the recognition that work won’t love you back and the awkwardness of finding love when you are without hope. A workplace novel, at once tender, startling, and deeply funny, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is a stunning, critical work of surrealist fiction, a piercing critique of late-stage capitalism, and a reckoning with its true cost."
By:  
Imprint:   Minedition (imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc)
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 236mm,  Width: 160mm,  Spine: 25mm
Weight:   499g
ISBN:   9781662602115
ISBN 10:   1662602111
Pages:   304
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Molly McGhee is from a cluster of unincorporated towns outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She completed her MFA in fiction at Columbia University, where, in addition to receiving a Chair’s Fellowship, she taught in the undergraduate creative writing department. She has worked in the editorial departments of McSweeney’s, The Believer, NOON, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and Tor. Currently living in Brooklyn, her work has appeared in The Paris Review.

Reviews for Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind: A Novel

"""The fiction of Molly McGhee is funny, freaky, intellectually bold and always from the heart. McGhee has seen enough of the world to know that you’ve got to start some trouble in it. She also knows that seeing the humor in our personal foibles and social absurdities (cruel as the latter often are), will always be a powerful way to commiserate with your fellow humans. Here is a writer who is keenly aware of what we’ve all got coming, but in the meantime is never afraid to laugh and live and fight on the page.” —Sam Lipsyte, Guggenheim Fellow and The New York Times Bestselling author of The Ask “Molly McGhee is a fearlessly inventive and exquisitely poised writer, one who knows how to aim right at the jugular of today's optimization-obsessed technocratic capitalism. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is trippy, incisive, and, most importantly, riotously funny.” —Alexandra Kleeman, author of You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine “Welcome to the somnambulatory prose of Molly McGhee, where vivid nightmares and lucid tender dreams live side by side. Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is a revelation told with the honesty and delicacy of a drowsy oracle. There's nothing like it, awake or asleep or anywhere in between.” —Hilary Leichter, author of Temporary “In the light of this insightfully nightmarish parable of the pervasive ravages of debt, Abernathy’s optimism, and the serene pace of McGhee’s prose, are stone cold chilling.” —Halle Butler, Granta Best Young American Novelist and author of The New Me “To her debut, McGhee brings a flawless ear for language and a tender hand for character. The world is burning, it's hard to tell dreams from nightmares, but McGhee's novel never crumbles beneath the bleakness of its circumstances. Lively, vacillating between humor and heartbreak at breakneck speeds, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is the rare novel that truly feels like it could've only been written by a single brilliant mind.” —Jean Kyoung Frazier author of Pizza Girl “Molly McGhee reminds me of absolutely no one. Here’s an original mind brimming over with invention and comic ferocity and a new world sensibility that serves to remind us what good hands the future of literature is in. I am hugely excited for everyone to read this mad, hilarious writer.” —Ben Marcus, Guggenheim Fellow and author of The Flame Alphabet"


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