Everything's Fine

by Socrates Adams

Ian is a salesman. He never hits his targets.Ian wants to go on holiday, but he can't afford it.Ian's boss is a powerful and well-respected man.Ian's daughter is a tube.A statement of defiance against passive, unquestioning existence, Everything's Fine will change the way you think about work, and tubes, forever.

Genres: Fiction

202 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 28, 2011

Reviews

[Luna Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Encargadillo de mierda" es posiblemente uno de mis nuevos héroes.
Me ha gustado mucho esta historia sobre cómo sobrevivir a esta miseria de mundo.
Un rollo muy Alt Lit que incluso me ha recordado a DFW.
Tenemos suerte de que Pálido Fuego nos haya traído a Adams a nuestro idioma.
Léanlo.

[Mark Thomas Stevenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

SHORT VERSION: Everything's Fine is great. really really really great.

LONGER VERSION: I finished it last night and i'm still figuring out what to say about it. it moves, it shakes; it takes turns in ways that are surprising and inevitable. it is good. it is very very good. it is a very funny book. it is a very sad, sigh-and-wince sort of book. there is something genuinely funny on every 2-4 pages. conversely, there is also something very sad every 2-4 pages. it manages this without 'gags' or 'sentiment', through a voice that is real and completely human and exactly right.

this is a book that actually 'says something' without being a dick about it -- not because 'saying something' is 'uncool', or having a 'message' is trite (it depends on the speaker and the message i guess), but simply by setting up a world very much like our own -- the office, apartment, high street -- simply by showing us just what the bureaucracy of the self actually looks like, we can see what its opposite: humanity.

it is my favourite kind of book: smooth and sparse on the outsid; 'connected', and 'complex', and 'finely-tuned' on the inside -- WITH THIS BOOK, EVERYTHING IS FINE!1!!! :-D

[D.J. Berndt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really, really love this book. If you read it in public, prepare to get stares because you will be laughing out loud. But for every laugh, there is an equally powerful and absurd tug on your heartstrings. All the Goodreads stars in the world can't do this book justice.

[Michael Seidlinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

All human interaction is sales.

It's true.

We are all selling ourselves.

The question I ask is, how much are you worth?

[Cam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two quotes that sum up the entirety of this book:
"I have never made a decision before."
"Industrial. Industrious. One word is to do with making money; the other is to do with making effort. The two are connected, but not in my case."

The book follows Ian, your everyday sales person who feels under the weather because he is incapable of making decisions for himself. I see the blatant message of this book - that all work (and indeed life in general) is pointless and hard while also being invariably unavoidable - but the execution is trite and messy.

Nice 1984-esque ending though.

[Germán · Rating 3 out of 5]

"La sala está oscura y vacía. Todos los asientos están vacíos. Los monitores están todos apagados. La oscuridad de la sala parece venir de los monitores. O no parece venir de ningún lado; es el estado natural de las cosas." (pág. 74)

"Hemos sufrido un montón juntos, Steve y yo. Tenemos un gran nivel de confianza y siempre nos llamamos para charlar o para reírnos a lo grande, e intercambiamos historias empresariales.
A veces pienso que soy como un instructor vital profesional para él. No le cobro nada, sin embargo. Somos amigos además de colegas. Tan sólo le ayudo a desahogarse.
Se lo dije una vez, que tenía la sensación de que yo era su entrenador vital profesional, y él me dijo, con un tono bastante adusto, que yo no era su entrenador vital profesional y que si, de alguna manera, me convirtiera alguna vez en su entrenador vital profesional, se suicidaría." (págs. 96-97)

[Ben Arzate · Rating 4 out of 5]

FULL REVIEW HERE

All in all, I think this is a solid novel. It's a funny and enjoyable absurd comedy about the emptiness of modern work life. Anyone who's ever worked a shitty job will sympathize with Ian's plight. This book is Socrates Adams's debut, and I think it's a good sign he'll be coming out with something even better in the future. I definitely recommend this, and I look forward to reading Adams's future works.

[Laurence Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sort of halfway point between the deadpan high irony cringeology of The Office and the reality-undermining weirdness of experimental New Wave science fiction. Treats the world we live in as a dystopia for human interaction, yet is also strangely optimistic about our chances of surviving within it. The funniest, best book I've read in ages: I read the whole thing in one sitting because I couldn't get enough of it.

[Daniel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lo siento, lo he intentado. Ya sé que no es que lo escriba un bobo sino que es un estilo "deliberadamente ingenuo". He leído y leído, es muy corto y aún así no ha sido fácil, pero deseaba que al final mereciera la pena. No es así, no funciona. Ni como historia, ni como categorización, ni como denuncia. Y lo he intentado.

[Ben Warden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. I haven't read anything so different for a long time. It's incredibly funny and frighteningly sad; told in a very individual voice and I can guarantee you won't have read anything similar. I would highly recommend it!

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

highly recommend this book, it made me laugh, i liked it and would want to read it again

[Shaun Gannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is funny. it is so funny. this book is so fucking funny. also suicide-inducingly despondent. also funny.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

holy shit

[Gregory Norminton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a depressingly good first novel. Socrates Adams has talent to burn, damn him, and this is perhaps the most memorable books I have read this year. Strongly recommended.

[Anne Houson]

Fantastic book. Surreal. Hilarious. Wry comment on what we really value in life. Quirky, surprising and easy to read - get it for your holidays!

[Ruben · Rating 4 out of 5]

el relato te lleva desde la incomodidad de no comprender nada de lo que te están contando hasta una sensación agradable de estar hablando contigo mismo.

[Tony Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is very weird and very funny. It speaks to the secret oddities in all of us. At least, I hope they're in all of us. Most of us. Not me, obviously.

[k]

Weird and kind of schizophrenic, but true. I can't rate this.