Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind A Novel

"Molly McGhee reminds me of absolutely no one. Here’s an original mind brimming over with invention and comic ferocity . . . [a] mad, hilarious writer.”
—Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet

For readers of Patricia Lockwood and Ling Ma, a debut novel for the modern working stiff.

Jonathan Abernathy is a loser . . . he’s behind on his debts, he has no prospects, no friends, 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 new 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.

Written with all the dramatic irony of Charlie Kaufman as written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind touches on a theme most people know all too well—the relentlessly crushing weight of debt. A workplace novel, at once tender, startling, and deeply funny, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind is a stunning, critical work of surrealist fiction.

With a keen sense of her readers, a wry wit, and an undeniable dexterity with language, Molly McGhee’s debut novel is a piercing critique of late-stage capitalism and a reckoning with its true cost.

Molly McGhee is from a cluster of unincorporated towns outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She completed her M.F.A. 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.