Several People Are Typing

A Novel

By: Calvin Kasulke

Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews, Neil Shah, Dani Martineck, Sophie Amoss, Neil Hellegers, Cary Hite, Sean Patrick Hopkins, Joshua Kane, Amy Landon, Nicole Lewis, Brittany Pressley, Jonathan Todd Ross

Length: 3 hrs and 27 mins

Publisher's summary

Good Morning America Book Club Pick!

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

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

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.

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. 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...wherever he says he is.

Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his coworker Pradeep to help him escape and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.

Meanwhile, Gerald’s colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that’s allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can’t everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?

In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully relatable factors attacking our collective sanity...and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.

©2021 Calvin Kasulke (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

A Good Morning America Book Club Pick • A Financial Times Best Science Fiction Book of 2021 • A New Scientist Best Book of 2021 • A Vox Staff Recommendation

“Several People Are Typing is fun, funny, addictive, and surreal…I blazed through it in an hour, came up for air, and then immediately blazed through it again.”--The New Yorker

“An existential romp with a wicked sense of humor, Calvin Kasulke’s debut novel is a Greek chorus of modern strife, a workplace of woebegone souls. It asks the important questions, like what it means to be a person, but also, what it means to be a gif. Several People Are Typing is a dirge for bureaucracy told by one of the funniest new writers @here.” --Hilary Leichter, author of Temporary

"[An] extremely meta debut novel that feels like just the right amount of triggering after working from home for the last 17 months." --Nylon 

Really liked it!

A really funny take on inter-office communication with a twist. It includes some of the drama, and allows us to see what maybe our bosses are reading when we think they're not. Because you know we all we all think, not here. lol

I couldn’t

I couldn’t make it 15 minutes in. I’m sorry. Absolutely not my style. It seems others like it.

odd audiobook experience

this does not work well as an audiobook, despite the great voice acting. what an odd experience.

Great use of ensemble cast!

A wonderful satirical send up of modern WFH and tech. If you’ve ever wanted to punch a Help Bot in the face, this one’s for you.

Read don’t listen

While the actors did a superb job, I feel this is the rare book that is better read by the reader as you would read your text messages.

Amusingly good fun.

This was a surprisingly good read. It was definitely entertaining and enough humor for quite a few chuckleworthy moments. There were some slight twists, that I didn’t expect, but not enough to detract from the overall story. The Full cast did great and I think that's what made this book so entertaining, was the fact that it was multivoiced and well-done. If you want an amusing entertaining humorous look into office type stuff, and great character interaction, give this one a try. Have fun and happy reading.