The Cube People

Christian McPherson's debut novel The Cube People pokes fun at government cubicle culture through the life and times of a struggling computer programmer/novelist wannabe. McPherson surrounds his protagonist, Colin MacDonald, with a cast of screwball characters while he toils away at his government job, struggles with fertility and dreams of becoming a published writer. Recycled air, bad lighting and bizarre environmental office policies by day; scheduled love-making sessions and rejection letters by night, push MacDonald to try to write his way out of his cyclical life story. Part tragedy, part comedy--with a bit of horror thrown in for fun--McPherson cooks up a boiling plot and a memorable anti-hero.
Prize(s): Short-listed ReLit Awards (2011) 
The life-among-the-bean-counters part of McPherson's book is well managed and entertaining ... the comic evocation of domestic routines makes for an interesting counterpoint to the rest of the book. What ties everything together is the character of Colin, a well-meaning, dutiful type who acts as a pivot of sanity for the chaos to swirl around. And despite the raw moments, the conclusion is a good-natured affirmation of his core family values.
--Alex Good, Quill & Quire
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[The] Cube People is a sardonic and acerbic tale of one man's daily grind as a faceless underling in a federal office. Outside of the office he works on his own novel (we get the plot within the plot), and desperately tries to get his wife -- anxious and impatient for children -- pregnant. It's a funny and clever book, and it could deservedly become a sleeper hit for the writer.
--Peter Simpson, Ottawa Citizen (The Cube People was also Simpson's pick as his critic's top choice!)
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Christian McPherson's The Cube People is a cocktail of genre work that has something for every reader to enjoy. Though the novel follows in the footsteps of novelists interested in exploring the angst of white collar workers (the kind of novel now diligently studied in Am Lit graduate seminars), it also ventures into the campy worlds of science fiction, blood-and-guts schlock horror, and a certain kind of fantasy, all the while sustaining the episodic carnival with a sincerely touching family narrative that is honest, funny, relatable, and very loving.
--Amanda Trip, Maple Tree Literary Supplement
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There is something to be said about a book that can keep you so deeply immersed you finish it in a single day ... between his book's rejections, his baby-obsessed wife and horrible day job, Colin becomes the everyman for anyone who has been constantly beaten down and hoped for salvation.
―The Charlatan
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"What's really distinctive about the book is just how funny it is. The sex scenes and masturbatory scenes are side-splitting; the bizarre, labyrinthine governmental logic is richly, darkly comic; the failures of the struggling writer are, in their sad-sack way, laughalong. McPherson has many ways to make the reader laugh, from the more energetic and obvious to the more sophisticated"
-Shane Neilson, The Fiddlehead
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Nightwood Editions
ISBN: 9780889712515
Paperback / softback
5.5 in x 8.5 in - 272 pp
Publication Date: 20101001
BISAC Subject(s):: FIC019000-FICTION / Literary 
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