trails's review against another edition
5.0
Johnathan Abernathy captures the awkwardness and alienation of working life expertly. McGhee has captured how financial dread colors every aspect of life. What makes this book transcendent is the glimpses of a better world it gives the reader. There are moments where you can see a sidelong view at a world where the demands of capital aren't hanging over everyone's head like a sword of Damocles. Genuine connection becomes possible, hope momentarily flourishes. Then those moments are crushed by the enormous weight of the constructed world the characters have internalized. The stakes are just too high to be forgotten for longer than minutes at a time, let alone disregarded long enough to prevent the tragedies that the world will inflict upon everyone. Johnathan Abernathy lives in our world. He lives in a world full of faceless cruelty. He and those around him are all instrumentalized by it. Like us, he struggles to cope with the enormity of that. His journey is one I can't wait to revisit.
melloncholy's review against another edition
lighthearted
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
glassglassmadeof's review against another edition
5.0
An achievement of teeth-rattling beauty and gall. McGhee incorporates a variety of thematic and stylistic influences into a strange and wonderous beast of a book. I've never really understood why someone would feel compelled to call something a "Great American Novel" until reading this, a work which recognizes our desires to be seen, heard, and felt, and a work that relentlessly harries the late-stage capitalist ideals of forgetting, working, wasting away. I'm unbelievably glad to have come across this.
sonia_reppe's review against another edition
4.0
Surrealist fiction. Jonathan Abernathy is crushed with debt. But when a government loan "forgiveness program" offers him a literal dream job, it seems like an answer to his problems...
Scientists have found a way to enter a person's dreams (leveraging a collective consciousness) and, of course, Corporate America has taken ownership of this in order to help improve their bottom line. Enter Jonathan: His new job entails entering the minds of middle-class workers while they sleep and removing the bad feelings and memories from their unconscious, so they can be better workers and not distracted with all that emotional stuff. He's just happy to have a way out of his debt and can ignore the warning signs until he is tasked with removing memories from his friend, Rhoda, which causes him to reconsider things.
For people who don't like reading dream sequences, this is not for you. There are a lot of dreams in here, especially in the middle of the book. The last fourth has a horror element, which I enjoyed.
Scientists have found a way to enter a person's dreams (leveraging a collective consciousness) and, of course, Corporate America has taken ownership of this in order to help improve their bottom line. Enter Jonathan: His new job entails entering the minds of middle-class workers while they sleep and removing the bad feelings and memories from their unconscious, so they can be better workers and not distracted with all that emotional stuff. He's just happy to have a way out of his debt and can ignore the warning signs until he is tasked with removing memories from his friend, Rhoda, which causes him to reconsider things.
For people who don't like reading dream sequences, this is not for you. There are a lot of dreams in here, especially in the middle of the book. The last fourth has a horror element, which I enjoyed.
laurenleyendolibros's review against another edition
Despite an intriguing premise, I'm not engaged with the story and it's the last of my current reads I want to pick up.
cnesi's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
abbylw's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Ive been following Molly mcghee’s work for several years now, and when she announced her debut novel i was crazy excited so i’m absolutely biased but i honestly loved it. Simultaneously a very real portrait of the american worker and an absurdist odyssey into the realm of dreams, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is about the desperate desires of a man $100,000 in debt. Abernathy’s world is one where the pearly gates of heaven swing outward and smack the dead who are eagerly awaiting salvation. He finds himself out of opportunities and submits himself to “♥ ♥ ♥ government sponsored indentured servitude ♥ ♥ ♥” in the form of auditing the dreams of workers— the literal night shift. Abernathy is a bumbling idiot you want to yell at but also want to succeed, though you know he’s doomed from the start. All that to say, I found the plot, questions it generated and the characters and their motivations incredibly compelling.
As for craft — masterclass first sentence, for starters. McGhee’s writing has a cinematic quality to it; the narration reads almost like a screenplay, reminiscent of Charlie Kaufman. Tone is witty and sharp, wry and nihilistic while also retaining levity.
Thanks Molly for sending me an advance copy, can’t wait to read it again when it comes out.
mlafave's review against another edition
Molly McGhee's debut novel Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is a surreal almost-ode, almost-elegy for the modern worker. Abernathy finds himself thrown into circumstances that he doesn't understand, and in fact forces himself to not understand to preserve his sanity. This strategy works...until it doesn't. Keenly aware of the ways that labor works today and deeply inventive in the ways that she addresses it, McGhee crafts a darkly comic tale for this age. What starts as a workplace novel turns nightmare-ish (literally!) as the relationships between these compassionately rendered characters unfolds. If you love a reimagination of modern life through a darkly surrealist lens, pick this up!
not_another_ana's review
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher
Jonathan Abernathy is trying his best, but with an insane amount of debt and no job he's drowning. When he's offered a job in a dream, auditing the dreams of American workers to make them more productive, he jumps at the opportunity to tackle his problems and maybe even make something of himself, unaware of what really lurks underneath and the specifics of his job.
An interesting critic of capitalism and the American Dream, this book sucked me in. Earnest, quirky and touching, this is one of the more intriguing and different books I've read in a while. Jonathan Abernathy is such a delight of a character, I found myself relating a lot to him. His situation is one that many of us have been in, with his sincere way of thinking and his lack of self confidence ringing true and so very human. He wants to do good, succeed, improve, but the system he's trapped in needs him to stay down.
The dream auditing was a captivating idea. As someone who dreams a lot, having someone in there judging and cataloging sounds like such a violation of my privacy and my existence that did alarm me. I do wish that the author had dug deeper into the mechanics of it, perhaps showing more dreams and the process of auditing them. While I gushed about Jonathan, he did get on my nerves a bit. I understand his naiveté and its importance to the plot but it got to a point where I was rolling my eyes a bit. The pacing could have been improved, it took a little too long for my taste to get to the meat of the plot.
Jonathan Abernathy is trying his best, but with an insane amount of debt and no job he's drowning. When he's offered a job in a dream, auditing the dreams of American workers to make them more productive, he jumps at the opportunity to tackle his problems and maybe even make something of himself, unaware of what really lurks underneath and the specifics of his job.
An interesting critic of capitalism and the American Dream, this book sucked me in. Earnest, quirky and touching, this is one of the more intriguing and different books I've read in a while. Jonathan Abernathy is such a delight of a character, I found myself relating a lot to him. His situation is one that many of us have been in, with his sincere way of thinking and his lack of self confidence ringing true and so very human. He wants to do good, succeed, improve, but the system he's trapped in needs him to stay down.
The dream auditing was a captivating idea. As someone who dreams a lot, having someone in there judging and cataloging sounds like such a violation of my privacy and my existence that did alarm me. I do wish that the author had dug deeper into the mechanics of it, perhaps showing more dreams and the process of auditing them. While I gushed about Jonathan, he did get on my nerves a bit. I understand his naiveté and its importance to the plot but it got to a point where I was rolling my eyes a bit. The pacing could have been improved, it took a little too long for my taste to get to the meat of the plot.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Child death, and Death
alisonburnis's review against another edition
dark
funny
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Jonathan Abernathy is not overly bright or interesting, he had no family, and he has an astronomical amount of debt, with no way out. He’s been unemployed for months. He’s behind on rent. And then, he’s recruited one night. In his dreams. Abernathy is ushered into a debt-repayment dream job, literally working to remove the unsavoury dreams of people who are being distracted by their lives instead of being good workers.
This is a darkly hilarious story, wandering through time and dreams, sometimes a little muddled, but mostly very sharp and funny, while bleakly wandering through the grim reality of debt and capitalism. For all of us who enjoy class critiques and strange fantasy worlds.
I received this ARC via NetGalley.
This is a darkly hilarious story, wandering through time and dreams, sometimes a little muddled, but mostly very sharp and funny, while bleakly wandering through the grim reality of debt and capitalism. For all of us who enjoy class critiques and strange fantasy worlds.
I received this ARC via NetGalley.