Kings of Infinite Space -- James Hynes

I want someone who has done tempwork to read this.

I kept thinking of the movie Clockwatchers while I was reading this one. One of the major differences, though, was that I cared about the characters in Clockwatchers, whereas I didn't get attached to anyone in Kings of Infinite Space. (Except for maybe Charlotte, the ghost-cat who torments the main character by making his apartment smell like cat pee and only allowing his television to show cat-related programming most of the time. But there wasn't enough of her).

It was totally entertaining and I enjoyed it, and the author kept me guessing and so on and so forth, and while I'm glad that I read it, it's not a book that I would read and re-read and read again. There were some things, though that made me think that it would make a great movie--the place that Paul temps at was described completely differently from the offices in Being John Malkovich, but I still was reminded of John Cusack's crouch-walk. And then there are bits like this:

Dear God, thought Paul, please don't let me sleep on my break. Not on my own time. He pushed the book away and pressed his fingers into his eyes, and when he pulled them away he saw a string dangling from the ceiling fifteen feet away. Paul squeezing his eyes shut, then looked again. The string was still there, hanging over a lunchroom table straight as a plumb line, suspended from a little, black, triangular gap where a ceiling panel was askew. At the lower end of the string a little noose was being raised and lowered over a salt shaker in the middle of the table. The noose draped once over the shaker without catching it, then twice, then again, the string above slackening each time. Then, one more try and it caught around the neck of the salt shaker. The string went taut, and the salt shaker swung silently up off the table.

Crazy things happen in this book. And it just gets crazier and crazier as it goes along, but even at the most insane moments, it worked. So, while I won't re-read this one a million times, I'll read more of his stuff. And I'll hope for a movie version. But only if Charlie Kaufman writes the screenplay.