colin lavery

Having only run into extended uses of “instant-messaging as dialogue or plot movement” writing in young adult fiction, I was somewhat skeptical about whether Several People Are Typing could be something that I’d get into. I think you could make a good argument that this book is also both a pandemic and internet novel – two more genres that are extremely hard to execute at this present moment, with the pandemic still raging and the internet introducing yet another absurd character today (google Dawn Dorland, if you’re curious). Meghana, however, has never led me astray with a suggestion and promised that this could easily be read in a few hours, so I gave it a shot.

Calvin Kasulke’s debut novel, a word I use loosely here, never breaks character. Most of the vocabulary one would use to describe a normal novel simply do not apply to this book. There is no distinction between dialogue and plot; we hear of other places in reference to some off-screen drama, but there’s no concrete setting to speak of; the characters formally resemble something more like the script of a play, except for the one who inexplicably disappears; and we only get estimates of the amount of time that elapses over the course of these 245 pages. The WHOLE thing is in the form of a Slack conversation.

We learn on the eighth page that our hero, gerald, has somehow gotten stuck inside of his office’s Slack message. His first word, a simple plea to slackbot: “help”. Eventually, slackbot becomes his mortal enemy and assumes gerald’s human body, locking gerald in Slack as an impending system reset approaches. As gerald tries to navigate his way out of the digital world, a coworker, pradeep takes care of his human body and even helps the embodied slackbot avoid harm that would threaten gerald’s wellbeing.

With such an absurd premise, it’s clear that this book is not attempting to be completely serious. There are moments of earnest reflection, usually from gerald who is quite literally having an existential crisis, but he’s never alone in cyberspace for long and the other characters seem to always provide comic relief. Aside from gerald’s predicament, there are office romances, inept management, and a mysterious dog food poisoning scandal that the characters’ employer, a PR firm, is forced to manage. All the elements of a classic office satire.

Like the best office satire, there are enough witty observations to elevate this novel to being a worthwhile read. I’ve had a few internships now, all due to the pandemic, during which I never met any of my coworkers in person. There are many who I literally only interacted with through Slack over the course of the eight months or so. Despite not being explicitly set in a pandemic, I found Kasulke’s novel to be the funniest and maybe most thoughtful reflection on these kinds of pandemic “relationships” that so many of us have had to form over the last year and a half. gerald’s contemplations on how much of his identity is tied to his physical body also evoke a “brain in a vat” sort of philosophical question at points.

I saw one negative review of this book that claimed the satire lacked “bite”, which, sure. But it’s a fun book, takes about two hours to read, is a well-executed exploration of form, and is honestly just charming to read. I’m not so sure it asks to be taken serious enough to need “bite”, either. Definitely worth a read.