From the Menacing to the Mundane: Workplace Fiction For Fans of Severance
Severance, a taut dystopian workplace drama streaming on Apple TV+, imagines a sharp, bold line drawn between our work lives and private lives. The main characters, in fact, have undergone an extreme surgical brain procedure that separates their awareness and memory of their time and activities inside and outside of work. More than two years into a pandemic that has changed the location and shape of many people's jobs as well as generated more contemplation and reflection about our relationship to work, Severance has hit a cultural nerve.
The show has been renewed for a second season and we have some fiction recommendations for you in the meantime to tide you over. These compelling titles—scifi, dystopian, and literary fiction—portray the workplace on a spectrum of menacing and sinister to mundane and meaningless.
Immunity
by Taylor Antrim
In near-future New York City, we meet Catherine, a broke socialite who is getting sick. Desperate, she takes a job with a luxury concierge service that fulfills the most outlandish desires of the ultra-rich—even if that means hunting down the 99%. As the hidden agendas of her employer and his shadowy clients emerge, Catherine realizes things are not remotely as they appear and she finds herself a pawn of mega-corporations and government agents all eager to profit from the cure embedded inside of her.
Several People Are Typing
by Calvin Kasulke
When his consciousness is uploaded into his PR company’s internal Slack channels, boosting his productivity, Gerald enlists the help of a co-worker to help him escape—and to find out what happened to his body.
Personal Days
by Ed Park
In an unnamed New York-based company, the employees are getting restless as everything around them unravels and the firings begin. Rich with Orwellian doublespeak, filled with sabotage and romance, this literary debut is at once a comic delight and a narrative tour de force. It’s a novel for anyone who has ever worked in an office and wondered: “Where does the time go? Where does the life go? And whose banana is in the fridge?”
The Other Black Girl
by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books so she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. But soon after, a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust. Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW. It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career.
Happy for You
by Claire Stanford
Evelyn leaves academia for a job at the third-most popular internet company where her team is tasked with developing an app that will help users quantify and augment their happiness. She struggles to find belonging: as a biracial person, as an Asian American, and as someone who doesn’t know how to perform social media’s vision of what womanhood should look like. As her misgivings mount, an unexpected development upends her assumptions about her future, and Evelyn embarks on a journey toward an authentic happiness all her own.
The Factory
by Hiroko Oyamada; translated from the Japanese by David Boyd
Three Japanese factory workers find themselves increasingly drawn into their work lives as the factory slowly expands to the point where they don’t know where their workplace ends and reality begins.
The Beautiful Bureaucrat
by Helen Phillips
Becoming increasingly uneasy about suspicious activities at a new job she felt lucky to land, Josephine makes a terrible realization and is forced to confront dangerous and powerful elements in order to protect her loved ones.
The Circle
by Dave Eggers
Hired to work for the Circle, the world's most powerful Internet company, Mae Holland begins to questions her luck as life beyond her job grows distant, a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken, and her role at the Circle becomes increasingly public.
Temporary
by Hilary Leichter
In Temporary, a young woman's workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it's shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, "there is nothing more personal than doing your job."
The Warehouse
by Rob Hart
Set in the confines of a corporate panopticon that’s at once brilliantly imagined and terrifyingly real, The Warehouse is a near-future thriller about what happens when Big Brother meets Big Business—and who will pay the ultimate price.
Radio Iris
by Anne-Marie Kinney
Iris Finch is a twentysomething socially awkward daydreamer and receptionist at Larmax, Inc., a company whose true function she doesn't understand. Gradually, her boss' erratic behavior becomes even more erratic, her coworkers begin disappearing, and the phone stops ringing, making her role at Larmax moot, and a mysterious man appears to be living in the office suite next door.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.
Have trouble reading standard print? Many of these titles are available in formats for patrons with print disabilities.