I inhaled this deeply weird, bleak yet somehow lush and gothic novel. Harried along by the kind of voicy, bossy narrator that I adore when it is done well (and I think, in this case, it is!), the titular Abernathy finds himself attempting to pay off insurmountable debt by indenturing himself to an agency that cleans up dreams. The why and how of this dream industry is not that important, even when its unsurprisingly evil capitalist heart is revealed. What makes this book so readable and gloriously ambitious is its voice, which regards its hapless characters with an unflinching yet humane eye. When Jonathan Abernathy falls into doomed love, when he attempts to befriend an unfriendly coworker, when he lashes out in ways that harm others, it’s easy to pity him–but difficult to feel that we would behave differently or better under the same impossible circumstances.