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The Other Ones
From Dave Housley, one of the founding editors of Barrelhouse, comes a ghostly, comic new novel that asks just one seemingly innocent What would you do if your fellow office workers won the lottery?
" The Office meets Then We Came to the End meets that recurring nightmare where your most loathsome co-workers win the lottery that you mocked them for playing each week...a sly gem of a novel."
— Leslie Pietrzyk , author of Admit This to No One
In The Other Ones, Housley tracks the actions and reactions of multiple characters in the wake of a cataclysmic event — a coworker winning the lottery. For better or worse, what can you do? Some coworkers dig in, some quit, some go...more than a little crazy. One commits suicide by jumping off the roof of the office, then returns as a ghost to haunt the winners. Funny, tragic, and real, The Other Ones shines a light on our contemporary relationships to money, work, and each other.
"Using his trademark wry, observant humor, Dave Housley explores a fascinating premise —when an office lottery pool hits the jackpot, what happens to the workers who are now multi-millionaires versus those who didn't put in a dollar to play? Filled with insights and skewering commentary on office politics and relationships, marketing culture, ageism, and commercialism, THEOTHER ONES delivers a funny and suspenseful tale of a corporate crisis as you've never read before."
— Angie Kim , author of Miracle Creek
"Dave Housley's The Other Ones is a riotous and bighearted office comedy, about a surprising kind of Rapture where it's not a heavenly force that whisks away half of your co-workers but a winning lottery ticket you forget to throw in on. Fans of Chris Bachelder or Sam Lipsyte will thrill as Housley applies eight point eight million dollars worth of regret to his loveable left-behind heroes, eager to learn who will crack among the cubicles and who might find another way to win their own good life."
— Matt Bell , author of Appleseed
" The Office meets Then We Came to the End meets that recurring nightmare where your most loathsome co-workers win the lottery that you mocked them for playing each week...a sly gem of a novel."
— Leslie Pietrzyk , author of Admit This to No One
In The Other Ones, Housley tracks the actions and reactions of multiple characters in the wake of a cataclysmic event — a coworker winning the lottery. For better or worse, what can you do? Some coworkers dig in, some quit, some go...more than a little crazy. One commits suicide by jumping off the roof of the office, then returns as a ghost to haunt the winners. Funny, tragic, and real, The Other Ones shines a light on our contemporary relationships to money, work, and each other.
"Using his trademark wry, observant humor, Dave Housley explores a fascinating premise —when an office lottery pool hits the jackpot, what happens to the workers who are now multi-millionaires versus those who didn't put in a dollar to play? Filled with insights and skewering commentary on office politics and relationships, marketing culture, ageism, and commercialism, THEOTHER ONES delivers a funny and suspenseful tale of a corporate crisis as you've never read before."
— Angie Kim , author of Miracle Creek
"Dave Housley's The Other Ones is a riotous and bighearted office comedy, about a surprising kind of Rapture where it's not a heavenly force that whisks away half of your co-workers but a winning lottery ticket you forget to throw in on. Fans of Chris Bachelder or Sam Lipsyte will thrill as Housley applies eight point eight million dollars worth of regret to his loveable left-behind heroes, eager to learn who will crack among the cubicles and who might find another way to win their own good life."
— Matt Bell , author of Appleseed
250 pages, Paperback
Published January 18, 2022
1 person is currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Dave Housley
18 books38 followersDave Housley's fourth collection of short fiction, Massive, Cleansing Fire, a series of linked stories that all end in a massive, cleansing fire, will be published by Outpost 19 Press in Spring 2017. He is the author of If I Knew the Way, I Would Take You Home (Dzanc Books), Commercial Fiction (Outpost 19), and Ryan Seacrest is Famous (Impetus Press, Dzanc Books eBook Reprint). His work has appeared in Hobart, Mid-American Review, Quarterly West, Wigleaf and some other places. He is one of the founding editors of Barrelhouse magazine, and a co-founder of the Conversations and Connections writer’s conference. Sometimes he drinks boxed wine and tweets about the things on his television at @housleydave.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 6, 2022
Clever conceit admirably executed.
October 12, 2023
Full of sharp humor shaded with the strange, sometimes comforting/sometimes deranged perseverance of office culture in the midst of extraordinary circumstances. Reading Housley, I am always open to surprises and unexpected directions, and The Other Ones certainly delivered in meaningful and compelling ways.
February 6, 2022
Few books of fiction--either novels or short stories--have interrogated the modern workplace quite like Dave Housley's *The Other Ones*. Deftly working between characters in an ensemble cast with a third-person narrator capable to getting close to these characters by chapter, Housley portrays office life for the mosaic it is, and takes as a central core the deep dissatisfaction currently playing out contemporaneously as the Great Resignation.
Housley's past work employs a sly, sardonic wit, a cheeky sense of humor, and a popular culture sensibility, all on display in *The Other Ones*. A classic "us" and "them" set up, a group of people who work together at a marketing company play the lottery and win. Their stories are set against those who didn't play. I don't want to comment too much on plot in a attempt not to write spoilers for those who haven't read. The conclusions the novel makes are both heartbreaking, and in some ways, surprising--but in the surprising yet inevitable way we ask of modern fiction.
Housley's past work employs a sly, sardonic wit, a cheeky sense of humor, and a popular culture sensibility, all on display in *The Other Ones*. A classic "us" and "them" set up, a group of people who work together at a marketing company play the lottery and win. Their stories are set against those who didn't play. I don't want to comment too much on plot in a attempt not to write spoilers for those who haven't read. The conclusions the novel makes are both heartbreaking, and in some ways, surprising--but in the surprising yet inevitable way we ask of modern fiction.
December 28, 2023
Started strong, should have ended a chapter sooner. Original setup: workplace dramedy toeing the horror line: the office lottery hits and the other ones that didn’t play.. do what now. The shots at real depth didn’t totally land. Loved the ghost.
December 19, 2021
*Full review to come!*
As the summary tells us, the book reckons with a lottery win - not the lottery winners themselves but the “other ones”, a group of colleagues who have been left out in the cold by choosing not to play along.
I’m particularly struck by the use of structure in this book, and how we’re able to bounce from perspective to perspective, moving the narrative on at a cracking pace. Each voice holds something unique: an increasingly unhinged road-tripper, the lonely office worker becoming obsessed with a coffee frother, and even a supernatural element - the dead-from-suicide colleague who wakes up each day in his coworkers’ kitchens, doomed to watch their lives helplessly. Housley’s prose is elegant while also feeling authentic - I found myself enchanted and racing through until I found I had devoured the book in less than two hours.
It was also fun to spot intertextual references like Meghan Phillips’ “Yellowshirt Elegy”, or the last names of characters as borrowed from respected writers in the literary community.
Like all of Housley’s work, you will likely laugh, cock your head and say “what the fuck?” and even tear up at times. All this to say: read THE OTHER ONES. Go on!
As the summary tells us, the book reckons with a lottery win - not the lottery winners themselves but the “other ones”, a group of colleagues who have been left out in the cold by choosing not to play along.
I’m particularly struck by the use of structure in this book, and how we’re able to bounce from perspective to perspective, moving the narrative on at a cracking pace. Each voice holds something unique: an increasingly unhinged road-tripper, the lonely office worker becoming obsessed with a coffee frother, and even a supernatural element - the dead-from-suicide colleague who wakes up each day in his coworkers’ kitchens, doomed to watch their lives helplessly. Housley’s prose is elegant while also feeling authentic - I found myself enchanted and racing through until I found I had devoured the book in less than two hours.
It was also fun to spot intertextual references like Meghan Phillips’ “Yellowshirt Elegy”, or the last names of characters as borrowed from respected writers in the literary community.
Like all of Housley’s work, you will likely laugh, cock your head and say “what the fuck?” and even tear up at times. All this to say: read THE OTHER ONES. Go on!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 25, 2024
Funny, insightful, with a full cast of characters, The Other Ones took unexpected turns as I followed these office mates in their year after a group won the lottery.
That is how it works, the entire machine. A man jumps to his death and a day later they are back in the exact spot, putting in a fresh batch of mulch, a row of daisies to cover up the man's very existence, the place where he chose to end the charade they are all sleepwalking through every day." (113)
Cue William H. Macy circa Fargo to play one of these characters. That is a compliment. Buckle up for humor that gets very real in the kind of country we live in, showing how damaged people can get.
That is how it works, the entire machine. A man jumps to his death and a day later they are back in the exact spot, putting in a fresh batch of mulch, a row of daisies to cover up the man's very existence, the place where he chose to end the charade they are all sleepwalking through every day." (113)
Cue William H. Macy circa Fargo to play one of these characters. That is a compliment. Buckle up for humor that gets very real in the kind of country we live in, showing how damaged people can get.
March 23, 2022
Brilliant idea for a novel - who hasn't wondered what would happen if the lottery group in the office actually won? The characters are all well drawn and developed, with the story jumping from one to another in a way that moves the plot swiftly along. There's a supernatural element to it that is expertly done. And it builds to a strange, unexpected climax that leaves you wishing it went on, so you knew what happened to everyone. A very enjoyable, sometimes funny, sometimes sad read that leaves me wanting more.
October 25, 2022
Excellent book! Will come back for a proper review.
March 8, 2023
This was such an awesome, unique read! Somehow both realistic and fantastical. What a great book
March 30, 2022
A lot of people wonder what it would be like to win the lottery, but Dave Housley has an entirely different question: what if you didn't win the lottery but a whole group of other people in your office did win? What would that be like?
As it turns out, almost anything can happen. Housley follows seven of "the other ones," those who didn't play the lottery that day, through the year after their co-workers' big win. One of these others, Yoder, jumps from the roof of the building and comes back as a ghost, following people into their kitchens and trying to understand why no one in the afterlife is given a set of instructions or some sort of orientation to their new existence as a ghost.
(By the way, that's not really a spoiler, since it says at least that much on the book jacket!)
The story is told by a chorus of seven voices, the "other ones," some of whom find comfort in work, others who most definitely don't, and even others who find that the disruption to their normal office life leads them to discover new talents and interests. The narrative pulls these people together, culminating in an exciting and surprising ending, but one that is ultimately very satisfying.
Housley has written a funny, sad, insightful, and wise commentary on that most mundane of existences - "the office" - and shows us that it's really the people you work with that matter the most.
As it turns out, almost anything can happen. Housley follows seven of "the other ones," those who didn't play the lottery that day, through the year after their co-workers' big win. One of these others, Yoder, jumps from the roof of the building and comes back as a ghost, following people into their kitchens and trying to understand why no one in the afterlife is given a set of instructions or some sort of orientation to their new existence as a ghost.
(By the way, that's not really a spoiler, since it says at least that much on the book jacket!)
The story is told by a chorus of seven voices, the "other ones," some of whom find comfort in work, others who most definitely don't, and even others who find that the disruption to their normal office life leads them to discover new talents and interests. The narrative pulls these people together, culminating in an exciting and surprising ending, but one that is ultimately very satisfying.
Housley has written a funny, sad, insightful, and wise commentary on that most mundane of existences - "the office" - and shows us that it's really the people you work with that matter the most.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews