"As intellectually playful as the best of Thomas Pynchon and as sardonically warm as the best of Kurt Vonnegut, The Heap is both a hilarious send-up of life under late capitalism and a moving exploration of the peculiar loneliness of the early 21st century. A masterful and humane gem of a novel." --Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters
Blending the piercing humor of Alexandra Kleeman and the jagged satire of Black Mirror, an audacious, eerily prescient debut novel that chronicles the rise and fall of a massive high-rise housing complex, and the lives it affected before - and after - its demise.
Standing nearly five hundred stories tall, Los Verticalés once bustled with life and excitement. Now this marvel of modern architecture and nontraditional urban planning has collapsed into a pile of rubble known as the Heap. In exchange for digging gear, a rehabilitated bicycle, and a small living stipend, a vast community of Dig Hands removes debris, trash, and bodies from the building's mountainous remains, which span twenty acres of unincorporated desert land.
Orville Anders burrows into the bowels of the Heap to find his brother Bernard, the beloved radio DJ of Los Verticalés, who is alive and miraculously broadcasting somewhere under the massive rubble. For months, Orville has lived in a sea of campers that surrounds the Heap, working tirelessly to free Bernard--the only known survivor of the imploded city--whom he speaks to every evening, calling into his radio show.
The brothers' conversations are a ratings bonanza, and the station's parent company, Sundial Media, wants to boost its profits by having Orville slyly drop brand names into his nightly talks with Bernard. When Orville refuses, his access to Bernard is suddenly cut off, but strangely, he continues to hear his own voice over the airwaves, casually shilling products as "he" converses with Bernard.
What follows is an imaginative and darkly hilarious story of conspiracy, revenge, and the strange life and death of Los Verticalés that both captures the wonderful weirdness of community and the bonds that tie us together.
About the Author :
Sean Adams is the author of the dystopian novel The Heap. His fiction has appeared in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, The Normal School, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Arkansas International, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of Bennington College and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
When he was seven, David Sadzin's first grade teacher gave him a paragraph to read out loud. She interrupted him halfway to proclaim him The Ringmaster in his class's musical extravaganza about the circus. He's been using his voice to get out of trouble ever since. After a few intense years on New York's stages, performing traditional and experimental theater, improv, and sketch comedy, he's now settled comfortably in front of the mic in his home studio in Brooklyn. Allyson Ryan is a native New Yorker whose diverse talents have led to a career in voice-over, theater, TV, commercials, and films. Narrating for several years now, she has an AudioFile Earphones Award for the audiobook On the Divinity of Second Chances by Kaya McLaren. She is also a 2017 Society of Voice Arts and Sciences Voice Arts(R) Award nominee. She can be heard in commercials, animated shows, and video games, and seen as Mom in several national commercials. Sarah Naughton is an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator and New York City-based actress, singer, comedienne, and voice-over artist. She began her work in the audiobook industry in high school, recording a few young adult titles with the Syracuse-based company Full Cast Audio.
Todd Haberkorn is an actor and winner of seven AudioFile Earphones Awards. He has created unique voices for a variety of characters for cartoons and video games. Add to this a healthy production life in front of and behind the camera as well as partaking in theater arts on stage, and he has had the pleasure of a wonderful career in the entertainment industry thus far. When he isn't working on a production of some kind, he travels the globe talking about those productions.
Coming soon...
Review :
"An incandescent, melancholy satire...Excerpts from an oral history of the prior residents' surreal life inside the tower provide a whimsically dystopian background to the main madcap plot. Fans of Borges and other inventive but piercing stories will revel in this offbeat novel."
-- "Publishers Weekly"
"As intellectually playful as the best of Thomas Pynchon and as sardonically warm as the best of Kurt Vonnegut, The Heap is both a hilarious send-up of life under late capitalism and a moving exploration of the peculiar loneliness of the early twenty-first century. A masterful and humane gem of a novel."
-- " Shaun Hamill, author of A Cosmology of Monsters"
"Somehow both timely and timeless, The Heap explores with heart what it means to live in the wake of strange new kinds of catastrophe."
-- " Seth Fried, author of The Municipalists"
