Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday (Unnamed Press)
Debbie Graber’s debut short story collection, Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday is a trenchant and searing satirical look at office life that is as astute and hilarious as Joshua Ferris’s And Then We Came to the End.
Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday (Unnamed Press)
Debbie Graber’s debut short story collection, Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday is a trenchant and searing satirical look at office life that is as astute and hilarious as Joshua Ferris’s And Then We Came to the End.
These thirteen stories skewer corporate culture, as told through souls adrift in a khaki-clad purgatory. And Graber knows from what she writes – she has held a number of jobs in corporate America, which informed her gimlet-eyed writing. One of the aspects of the workplace that most interested her are the personas are forced to adopt. “It’s like they exist in a far flung area of the time space continuum where reason seems to always be taking a vacation day,” says Graber, “If we’re spending all these hours in make-believe land, what does that say about the work we are doing? What does it say about us?
In Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday, our hero Kevin Kramer is the new Senior Vice President of the Products Profit center at Production Solutions. He has worked hard for all his success, perfected the non-clammy handshake, and speaks “corporate” like a second language. But our Kevin Kramer harbors many dark secrets. As do many of the characters in Graber’s stories: An HR manager trying desperately to maintain order, even as the entire software department vanishes under mysterious circumstances. An estranged (and possibly deranged) sister devises her reunion by throwing together a DIY wedding shower. A man who wears a Chewbacca costume feels he is uniquely qualified to divide the world into winners and losers. And a call center representative tries to give himself a pep talk after a particularly egregious client interaction.
With a wit and voice all its own, with Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday, Debbie Graber announces herself as a literary talent to watch.
Praise for Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday
“The stories in Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday are funny and funny-sad, formally bold, and a total delight to read. Graber captures perfectly the absurdities of contemporary, corporate America and her fabulous debut reminds us that we are all searching for meaning and human connection, whether it be from friends, family, or reply-all emails.”-Edan Lepucki, author of California
“Debbie Graber's stories are crisp, sardonic, and funny—as antic and acerbic as they are intelligent and alert. A sly and incisive observer of human nature, Debbie Graber will win you over with this delightful debut.”-Sara Levine, author of Treasure Island!!!
"Evil, evil, evil stories-- If you know the devil, you should buy him this for Christmas."-Ben Loory, author of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day
“Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday offers satirical fiction that causes you to howl with laughter at the same moment its sharply exposed horrors cut into you. Debbie Graber's stories capture the absurdities of the 21st century corporate workplace in which white-collar millenials find their inboxes always brimming with new incentives for betrayal and self-betrayal. Neither the powerless nor the powerful outrun their demons in these brilliantly funny and bruising tales of American "enterprise."-Kevin McIlvoy, author ofThe Fifth Station
“Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday skewers that place where so many of us spend our days and about which we spend the other hours of our lives complaining: the modern workplace. In this bitingly funny, precisely crafted collection, Debbie Graber takes on office excess: happy hours, overtime, trysts, and petty grievances. In doing so, she questions our societal notions of success and failure and invites us to laugh at our bosses and coworkers and, perhaps most of all, ourselves—knowing that if we don’t laugh, we just might cry. Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday is satire at its most incisive.”-Lori Ostlund, author of After the Parade
"With laugh-out-loud humor and a wildly keen eye for detail, Graber doesn't just brilliantly satirize our heavily corporate and medicated world, she wonderfully eviscerates it."-J. Ryan Stradal, author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest
Debbie Graber has performed at Second City, worked in an office, and received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from U.C. Riverside at Palm Desert. Her stories have appeared in The Nervous Breakdown, Harpers, Zyzzyva, Hobart, and elsewhere. Kevin Kramer Starts on Monday is her first collection of stories. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
Matt Flanagan began his career as a writer for The Late Show With David Letterman, wrote movies you haven't seen, and several shows that were canceled after 13 episodes. He currently writes for Disney Channel's Stuck In The Middle and co-hosts a storytelling podcast called Tell It Anyway with his wife Jennie Josephson.
