Job Shadowing by Malcolm Sutton

49th Shelf Most Anticipated Spring 2016 Fiction Selection

Big Other’s Most Anticipated Small Press Books of 2016 Selection

My slow adaptation is to her a sign of my being ‘outside life.’

An unemployed man, losing his ability to imagine a future self, disappears into the shadow world of an ambitious millennial. His wife, an idealistic artist at the turning point of her career, falls deeper and deeper into the gravitational field of her ultra-wealthy employer.

Job Shadowing is a novel of our 20th-century desires torn asunder by the new millennium. Through stylish, searching prose, it tests the grounds of impossible love, generational identity and middle-class fantasy.

Watch the BookThug Author Interview with Malcolm Sutton:

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Praise for Job Shadowing:

“Job Shadowing is a work of pure, energizing imagination that speaks directly to our times. As we hang on through each plausible yet impossible turn, the parallel worlds Malcolm Sutton effortlessly creates pull us ever closer to the underlying currents and desires that make the personal political, then twist back around to become deeply personal once again. A book for our shadow-generation and, at the same time, a work of literature that just might subtly help us break free.” —Jacob Wren, author of Polyamorous Love Song and Rich and Poor

“A young married couple each experiences the phenomenon of union – on different continents, across gender and class – and the impossibility of reunion after their duplicitous adventures. A smooth art thriller in the tradition of Bolaño, Job Shadowing meddles with corporate culture, dying domesticity and the living, breathing life of the alienated worker. Malcolm Sutton’s work is stimulating and stand-alone.” —Tamara Faith Berger, Believer Book Award–winning author of Maidenhead

Excerpts:

Read an exclusive excerpt from Job Shadowing in Eleven Eleven

Reviews:

“If you dig the novels of Haruki Murakami, or obsess over the film Being John Malkovich; if you worry about the intersection of art and commerce, or feel trapped in a corporate netherworld, then Job Shadowing by Malcolm Sutton is the read for you.” —Heather Birrell, Toronto Star

“Job Shadowing unravels our beliefs, observes the kinks and twists and snarls, and leaves readers wondering whether it matters if the yarn splits.” —Buried in Print

“Neither Job Shadowing nor Rich and Poor [by Jacob Wren] can be described as realistic works of fiction, and yet at the same time both are directly concerned with some of the most pressing and talked-about social issues of our time: the widening gap between an economic elite and everyone else, and the generational conflict between older haves and younger have-nots.” —Alex Good, Canadian Notes and Queries

Esprit de Corps – a review of Job Shadowing —Dorothy F. Lane, Canadian Literature

Interviews and Profiles:

Job Shadowing: Writer, Editor, and Artist Malcolm Sutton in Conversation about his Novel and Many Types of Work —Open Book Toronto

First Fiction Fridays: Job Shadowing —All Lit Up

12 or 20 Questions with Malcolm Sutton —rob mclennan’s blog

The Lucky Seven Interview, with Malcolm Sutton —Open Book Toronto

Malcolm Sutton in Conversation with Aleksina Teto —Leks Teto

A Year in Reading —Pasha Malla, The Globe and Mail

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Malcolm Sutton lives in Toronto. His fiction has appeared in Maisonneuve and Joyland, and his writing on art has appeared in C Magazine and Border Crossings. He is the Founding Editor of The Coming Envelope journal of innovative prose, and the Fiction Editor at BookThug Press. Job Shadowing is his debut novel. Learn more at https://malcolmsutton.wordpress.com/writing/.