Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday

Information

Author:

Debbie Graber

Date:

May 2016

Author:

Additional Info

KEVIN KRAMER STARTS ON MONDAY

Original Language: English

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"Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday made me laugh out loud for the first time in fifteen years. Thank you, Debbie Graber. Buy this book!"
-Steve Carell

"With laugh-out-loud humor and a wildly keen eye for detail, Graber doesn't just brilliantly satirize our heavily corporate and medicated world, she wonderfully eviscerates it."
-J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest

"Kevin Kramer is a tough negotiator. Kevin Kramer has an Aeron chair which cost 800 bucks. 95% of employees surveyed think you should go out and buy KEVIN KRAMER STARTS ON MONDAY right away."
-Cath Murphy, Lit Reactor

Insightfully utilizing the tools of the institution itself — business jargon, circular speech, emails, memorandums, gossip, confession — in Graber’s hands the office is a microcosm of life itself.
-Electric Lit

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In the vein of George Saunders and Maria Semple, the satirical short stories in Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday tell the tales of souls adrift in a corporate netherworld.

Kevin Kramer is the new senior vice president at Production Solutions. He was hired to bring a hip, 21st century vibe to the company. He’s worked hard for his success. For example, it’s taken him years to perfect a non-clammy handshake. He speaks corporate like a second language, working words like “synergy” into casual conversation. He feels well-liked: his parking space is shat upon far less frequently than those of the other managers. But Kevin Kramer harbors many dark secrets.

In fact, for everyone in these stories, avoiding the truth is a full-time job: A human resources manager tries desperately to maintain order, even as the entire software department vanishes under mysterious circumstances. A woman plans a homemade bridal shower for her estranged sister. A man who wears a Chewbacca costume feels uniquely qualified to divide the world into winners and losers. And a call center representative searches his soul after a particularly humiliating experience with a client.

The characters wear their delusions just as comfortably as they wear their work uniforms of khaki pants and button down shirts. They may seem like narcissists and misfits, nihilists and pathological liars, but they are dreamers all.

Debbie Graber's short stories have appeared in Harpers.org, Zyzzyva, The Nervous Breakdown and Word Riot, among other journals.

Her story collection was a finalist for the 2014 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. She received an MFA from the University of California, Riverside.

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