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The Smile Factory by Todd Keisling is a tight, terrifying tale, a wonderful marriage of cosmic horror and Office Space. It's a good read for anyone familiar with the monotony, dread, and soullessness of corporate culture.
Book theme song: Awoken by H8 Seed and Woodentoaster I don't know what everybody's talking about, this just seems like a normal office job to me. But really, if you've ever worked a soul-sucking job, you'll relate to this. It's a short but effective dystopia story. I also love the conversational voice and the framing device.
A disturbing commentary on the common working world and its soul-sucking mission. If Bosch were alive, he’d paint this. And then pop some Prozac. Horribly bleak yet creative.
An all too real look at the working world! Check out my full review here... https://horrornovelreviews.com/2018/0...
Every once in a while a story comes along that is just a complete gut-punch. A story that is so good, and so relatable, that when you finish you have to sit for a while, just to process what you’ve read.This isn’t one of those stories. No, Todd apparently wasn’t satisfied with a simple gut-punch. Nope. Todd decided to go 100% Muhammad Ali on the reader and leave them a complete, bloody, crying mess. But it really isn’t the actual story that does it. It’s the deeper, much more frightening, truer
Quite a strange and twisted tale. Almost like a littleTwilight Zone episode.Not bad at all.3.5
4.5!This book reads like a Black Mirror episode and I loved it. It clocks in at around 30-ish pages which is short enough to read in one sitting (I recommend this). I'm always amazed at what talented authors can do in so few pages! And can I just say, officially for the record, MORE CHAPBOOKS PLEASE!*steps down**clears throat*Continues...In THE SMILE FACTORY, Keisling swivels the focus around and aims it at YOU, reader. "You did a bad thing just now, friend."While this narrative isn't the most p...
THE SMILE FACTORY by Todd Keisling is both an employee handbook and a narrative/cautionary tale, which follows the (mis)fortunes of Marty, an office worker within a part corporate hellscape, part ultra-orthodox religious Tartarus. It is a world in which promotion is the ultimate punishment, as higher level managers become less (and more) than human. ‘…the higher you climb the food chain, the more likely you are to be consumed.’ Keisling’s THE SMILE FACTORY is a magnificently imaginative Lovecraf...
Here's a newsflash for you: office jobs are fucking mundane. Day in, day out, almost always the same. Sitting at the same desk, answering phone calls, going to meetings, typing e-mails, dealing with customers with various mental instabilities, psychotic tendencies, and degrees of entitlement, co-workers who drone on and on and on about their vapid, insignificant little lives. Stuck in a dead-end position, toiling away simply to make those stuck in higher positions than yours look good, so they c...
This was an interesting take on the modern workplace and corporate America. Not quite up there with Bartleby, My Work is Not Yet Done, or Office Space, but at only around 30 pages it's worth a read. More than anything, this will have you thinking of work, your work-life balance, and if it is all worth it.It will be interesting to see how the workplace evolves in a post-pandemic world. There is certainly the potential for this to become a snapshot of a former time. One can hope anyway.
This is a weird book, and I can't really tell you if my rating will stay the same next week.It's one of those lunch time shorts, about thirty-something pages, and I usually don't spend too much time with reviews on these short stories. However, this one had my mind going in all sorts of directions and I need to explore them to sort it out in my head.Was this story meant to be read as straight forward or not?Well, straight forward, I guess you can call it sci-fi. The aliens have taken over our pl...
Creepy, clever, metaphor of a horror story (chapbook) about hating your job but putting a smile on anyway. Neatly done
The Smile Factory is, without a doubt, the strangest story I've read in all of 2018. That's not a bad thing necessarily. Sometimes it's good to take off the rose-colored glasses and look at our surroundings through a different filter.Here, author Todd Keisling examines corporate life through a Lovecraftian lens..."Here at [Company name redacted], down is up and up is down; the higher you climb the food chain, the more likely you are to be consumed."BTW, never ask about Marty Godot. Why? You'll j...
Todd Keisling is the Dilbert of Horror. A sea of cubicles in the corporate world.If that phrase doesn’t cause a shiver to rocket up and down your spine, Keisling’s latest is a tightly woven cosmic horror story in the vein of HP Lovecraft and what is called the “new weird.”But, if you have ever been a small cog in the uncaring machinery of corporate America, this novelette will terrify you—cold sweats optional. See, Keisling masterfully captures the life of a drone—with all the masks removed for
Check out my review here:https://thewriterfromthenorth.wordpre...
Welcome to the corporate world!If you ever thought that the daily grind of work was slowly killing you, this is the book for you. A vaguely defined entity has taken over the corporation, and those unfortunate enough to labor under the new boss had better be wary of working too efficiently....because that work ethic just might get you noticed. And believe me, you do NOT want a promotion...
