The Expansion Project
Tom Crowley, a mid-level employee at Capmeadow Business Park, experiences a sort of unravelling when his eight-year-old child goes missing during ‘bring-your-daughter-to-work day.’ Except it is possible, probable even, that she was never there. None of Tom’s colleagues know anything about ‘bring-your-daughter-to-work day,’ and yet Tom does not fully believe Hen is really at home. Refusing to accept she is safe, Tom continues to search for her in the maze of corridors that make up his place of work.
Meanwhile, the Capmeadow Business Park expansion is in full swing and is growing in unpredictable ways. It seems that nothing – time, space, contracted working hours – can be relied upon in the Capmeadow expansion.
About the author
Ben Pester is the author of the short story collection Am I in the Right Place? He lives in London. The Expansion Project is his first novel.
Judge Megan Nolan on The Expansion Project
"It is ‘bring your daughter to work’ day at Tom Crowley’s place of business, but soon Hen, his eight year old, has been lost instead of integrated into his profession. What follows is a magnificently destabilising rendering of work life which is both familiar and totally foreign; boundaries between the real and the mediated, the father and the man, the worker and the person, all begin to warp and bleed. Disturbing, funny and deeply odd, this is a novel for the ages, but especially ours."