An all-too-familiar dystopia where public perception precedes reality and our identities are defined by what we consume
As head of the crisis management team at a Madison Avenue PR firm, Leonard Lundell spends his days counseling executives whose reputations have been ruined by scandal. But Leonard has been managing a strange and debilitating crisis of his own that's held him captive his entire adult life: Leonard likes to eat soap, pencils, paint chips-anything with no nutritional value.
For years, he's kept his compulsion hidden behind a professional veneer. But when he signs an important client, an antisocial file clerk unwittingly discovers Leonard's secret and blackmails him into accommodating her own bizarre culinary indulgences.
A picaresque set against the backdrop of Madison Avenue's marketing machine in the months leading up to the 2008 financial crisis,The Appetite Factoryexamines the earliest days of our post-truth era, where a scandal-obsessed news cycle and social media's rise as an information platform have given birth to a culture addicted to recreational outrage and hell-bent on finding the next public figure to disgrace to keep ourselves entertained.
About the Author :
Jon Gingerich is a fiction instructor at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop in New York. Since 2006, he’s served as the editor of O’Dwyer’s magazine. His short stories have been published in The Saturday Evening Post, The Malahat Review, Pleiades, Grist, Stand, Oyez Review, The Helix, and others. Jon’s freelance writing regularly appears in trade and consumer magazines, as well as web outlets dedicated to politics, culture, and writing craft. He’s a graduate of The New School’s creative writing MFA program. He lives in New York City.
Review :
“An immaculately constructed transgressive thriller (fans of Palahniuk will rejoice) . . . The Appetite Factory was my favorite book of the year.” —Gabriel Hart, LitReactor
“The Appetite Factory is a brilliant satire that draws a bulls-eye on multiple targets—mindless consumption, outrage culture, corporate dystopia, the post-truth era—and then hits each one with deadly accuracy. The fact that it's so well-written on top of that elevates it to must-read status.” —Rob Hart, author of The Paradox Hotel
“Cautionary tale? Satire? An unflinching look at the ways we manipulate each other? All of the above. If Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh had a baby—after watching Mad Men, Swallow, and Secretary—it might look something like this.” —Richard Thomas, author of Spontaneous Human Combustion
“The Appetite Factory lays bare the cynicism of modern media damage control, where any disaster can be spun to someone’s advantage, and Jon Gingerich does it all with scalpel-sharp prose and searing wit.” —Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionist's Handbook
