The Factory

“I wasn't ready for work. I wasn't ready for the world. I was hoping for a natural disaster, but it was a beautiful day. I forced myself out of bed and went to work.”

The strange formatting of the dialogue and the nondirectional meandering of the plot made this book difficult to get through, but these idiosyncrasies definitely added to the book's surreal, hazy atmosphere. I really felt the absurdity, confusion, and futility of industrialism that the characters embodied.

I was intrigued by the animal plotline but wish it would've been fleshed out a bit more, although I can appreciate why certain plotpoints were left unexplained. The reveal that Furufue had been working at The Factory for fifteen years was really hard-hitting and almost eerie, especially since it was brought up so casually and the subject was dropped as if this fact was as inconsequential as the rest of the characters' lives.