Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

August 15, 2023
What would happen if, instead of taking a person's soul, a Faustian bargain actually revealed it? The opening of McGhee's debut novel finds the eponymous Jonathan Abernathy in a dreary waiting room, and the sharp-tongued narrator tells us it's his "spiritual cousin: chairs of vinyl, cluttered secretarial space, carpet that's almost as downtrodden as he." On the edge of eviction and drowning in a pool of debt "so diverse ecologists would be within their jurisdiction to classify the collection as 'an ecosystem, ' " Abernathy has been lured to Archival Office 508 by the opportunity to become a "dream auditor" and have his loans forgiven. All he has to do is don a white jumpsuit, go to sleep, and enter people's dreams; once there, he'll be taking notes and cleaning up anything that makes the dreamers unproductive workers. The problem is that he's horrible at it. He's unable to read the dreamers' subconscious symbolism or emotional states--shortcomings for which Kai, his no-nonsense and short-tempered boss, constantly berates him. Meanwhile, in waking life, he's growing closer to his next-door neighbor, Rhoda, and her daughter, Timmy, but their blossoming intimacy is overshadowed by past traumas that they struggle to process. After a series of strange events, Abernathy begins to uncover the (even) darker side of the Archival Office's work and Kai's entanglement in it. Sleep and wakefulness bleed into each other as the places that Abernathy's dreams bring him start looking eerily familiar. Though the novel is a brutal examination of the psychological pressures and ethical complexity required to survive under late capitalism, McGhee's wry humor, tenderness, and razor-sharp writing keeps it from veering into nihilism and infuses it with a real, if melancholy, kind of hope. Upton Sinclair meets modern workplace satire--with a lot of heart.

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September 4, 2023
In McGee’s darkly comic fantastical debut, an everyman hero attempts to crawl out of debt with a job as a Dream Auditor, which requires him to enter and alter other people’s dreams. Jonathan Abernathy, obliviously handsome, downtrodden, and inept, finds employment with the mysterious Archival Office, a government contractor that provides a productivity enhancement service to employers. Jonathan spends his REM sleep cycle entering peoples’ dreams, where he identifies and scrubs traumatic memories and other stress triggers—any “inner turmoil” that might surface in the workplace. In exchange, Abernathy receives a meager nightly payment and a fraction of loan forgiveness. Despite a growing sense of unease, he convinces himself that he’s doing respectable, important work—even performing a kindness. That is, until the Archival Office’s preoccupation with success sends him sliding back into existential dread. Things become even more complicated after he begins auditing the dreams of his neighbor and love interest, Rhoda. McGhee anchors the zany narrative with biting depictions of financial instability. Fans of Ling Ma’s Severance will soak this up. Agent: Angeline Rodriguez, WME.

Starred review from September 1, 2023
McGhee's sparkling first novel is set in a magical realist, late-capitalist dystopia where people can enter dreams to help the dreamer work more efficiently. Jonathan Abernathy is drowning under both student-loan debt and the debt he inherited from his dead parents. He lives in a tiny basement room, longing to escape his nightmare existence. He receives a modicum of hope when he is recruited to audit nightmares, as the role includes debt relief. When asleep, he audits dreams, and then, exhausted, works at a hot dog stand during the day. Jonathan maintains an aura of positivity, much to the annoyance of those around him, even as he internally derides himself. The narrative builds to a breathless conclusion, reminiscent of Ron Currie Jr.'s Everything Matters (2009), and, like that novel, this is a debut that announces a remarkably imaginative and exciting new talent. The unreality of the setting is expertly used to suggest the inhumanity of many accepted norms, and the narrative unfurls into a superlative state-of-the-nation novel like no other. Full of astoundingly resonant and eminently quotable points about labor, capital, and depression, this wondrous literary creation brilliantly captures the excessive demands of contemporary work.

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