Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes. wherever he says he is.įaced 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. 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. 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. 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.

'An absurd, hilarious romp through the haunted house of late-stage capitalism.' -Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House.

A work-from-home comedy where WFH meets WTF.

Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.A Good Morning America Book Club Pick! Several People Are Talking was published today by Doubleday. And, you know, people weren’t going to understand. You know, I was just convinced that in a year or two… Slack was going to be…outmoded by something else. “I kept on saying…this book is going to age like yogurt. “I wrote it in a couple of months in early 2019,” he said.

In an interview with NPR, Kasulke said he hadn’t predicted how much Slack would have become a part of everyday life when he started writing the book. “If you’ve ever sent a text message or DM or been in a group chat, you’re totally gonna get this.” “Even though the book is written entirely in Slack chats, you don’t need to ever have used Slack or to even really know what Slack is to read this book,” he said. Readers unfamiliar with Slack and its enigmatically named “knock brush” notification sound don’t have to worry, Kasulke told GMA. A critic for Kirkus called the novel “a compulsively readable satire of modern corporate culture.” Kasulke’s novel, his first, follows an employee at a public relations firm in New York whose consciousness becomes trapped in his company’s Slack channel.

Calvin Kasulke’s Several People Are Typing is the latest selection for the Good Morning America book club.

Several people are typing book