Since The Layoffs: A Novel - Hardcover

Levison, Iain

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569473358 ISBN 13: 9781569473351

Publisher: Soho Press, 2003

Synopsis

From the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, A Working Stiff’s Manifesto, comes this darkly entertaining first novel. Jake Skowran has been laid off from his job as a factory supervisor. The work he is offered is a lot less than legal, but he has little choice except to take it. He is going to carve off a piece of the economy or die trying.

"Levison is the real deal . . . bracing, hilarious and dead on."—The New York Times Book Review

About this title

About the Author:

Iain Levison is the author of A Working Stiff's Manifesto, an account of his post-collegiate work experience, consisting of forty-two jobs in ten years, and two novels, Since the Layoffs and Dog Eats Dog. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.

From Booklist:

Like Donald Westlake in The Ax (1997), about an insurance executive turned hit man, Levison brings a burning rage to this accomplished debut novel. Ever since Jake Skowran lost his job when the town factory closed, he has been fending off his creditors with increasingly vitriolic rants. His longtime girlfriend has left him, and his unemployment is due to run out. So when Ken Gardocki, a backwater bookie and drug dealer, offers Jake $5,000 to kill Ken's wife, Jake accepts without hesitation. He goes on to kill three more people, including a corporate flack who hassles Jake about wearing a smock at his new minimum-wage job at the Gas 'n' Go. Levison has a wickedly sardonic sense of humor and a real feel for the disconnect between the line peddled in employee manuals and the way things actually play out in the workplace. In addition, the murder scenes are horrific--panic-laden, brutal moments of mayhem. A deep outrage over wrecked lives and towns underpins this ferociously articulate assault on corporate and personal ethics. Joanne Wilkinson
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About this edition

• Publisher: Soho Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1569473358
• ISBN 13: 9781569473351
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176