Review by Booklist Review
When confronted with a blank space, the mind tends to wander. Adams' second novel, following The Heap (2020), takes place in such an environment. Hart is transported via helicopter to a research facility known as the Northern Institute, where it's bitterly cold and snow-covered. He's tasked with supervising two other employees, Gibbs and Cline, as they keep the recently vacated facility primed for an eventual but vaguely pending return. His instructions are helicoptered in each week, and feedback is curt to the point of mechanical. What, then, to do if a thing is spotted on the barren landscape outside the facility, where it is forbidden and dangerous to venture? The banter among the three about their monotonous tasks and their stress about the thing in the snow veers into the absurd. Adams' quirky look at a confined and isolated workspace also offers an almost Stoppard-like look into character development while making a rather bleak but humorous statement about contemporary working life. Though the world Adams created is spare, the reading mind fills every corner with all that is dreamed and feared.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Workers try to hold onto their sanity as they maintain a desolate, snow-covered research station in Adams's dryly funny absurdist latest (after The Heap). Each week, a remote administrator named Kay assigns a meaningless task to Hart, the on-site manager at the obsolete Northern Institute, for Hart to accomplish with his subordinates Gibbs and Cline, their employer having deemed it more cost-effective to keep the place running than to close it down. The crew spends their time testing the noisiness of doors and the stability of chairs, and doing their best to avoid Gilroy, the sole remaining researcher (according to Hart, Gilroy is the type who, when encountered, elicits "distaste is not just warranted, it is the correct evolutionary response"). One day, the men spot something in the snow. The distraction annoys Hart, who views the development as a threat to his already tenuous leadership. After Gibbs reports the object to Kay, Kay replies, "if immobile, not of concern." Consequently, the crew members become irrationally convinced that the barely perceptible object is moving. The workplace gags are effective, and as the workers turn on one another, things really take off. The strange blend of satire, mystery, and psychological thrills make for a winning combination. Agent: Kent Wolf, Neon Literary. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Following his eye-catching debut, The Heap, Adams returns with a psychological thriller cum satire set at an all-but-abandoned research institute in an unspecified chilly north. While the sole remaining researcher studies the sensation of coldness, supervisor Hart is alarmed by the appearance of something out there in the snow. With a 50,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Snowy, nearly uninhabitable living conditions drive a team of caretakers stationed in a deserted research facility to the brink of madness. The Northern Institute rests in a remote expanse of snow that purportedly never melts and is hazardous to one's health. When an unnamed incident causes the facility to lose its research funding and shut down, the sole remaining researcher--a shrewd, cold man named Gilroy--hires a crew of three to maintain the facility since he deems it "cheaper to hire a small team to look after things than to make the anticipated repairs were the building simply left vacant until research could resume." With Hart, the team's supervisor, as our narrator, we experience time passing in this strange, lonely facility, days filled with the completion of laughably mundane tasks: testing doors for noises or chairs for their stability. Tension rises between Hart and the other caretakers when the three spot an unidentifiable object out the window lying in the snow. Cline, a painter with an eye for light, and Gibbs, who is skilled in the powers of description, are beguiled by the object, growing more and more fixated on its nature, while Hart--who prides himself on his leadership ability and powers of efficiency--perceives the distraction as a threat to his faltering authority. Time, though, begins to distort for all three, days blurring together, day and night becoming indistinguishable. And after tireless observation, Cline and Hart agree with certainty that the object is changing color, that it is moving. Is the object responsible for the slipperiness of time and the sense that gravity itself has destabilized? The novel gains momentum and intrigue as new mysteries arise and discord between Hart and the others rises to a head. Dry and sometimes-unsettling workplace humor adds delight and levity to a novel whose themes explore the drudgery of the modern workplace and the depths to which the mind in isolation can tumble. A fine, intriguing hybrid of satire and thriller. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
