In Ben Pester’s debut novel The Expansion Project everything is off. The novel begins with Tom Crowley readying himself and his eight-year-old daughter Hen for “take-your-daughter-to-work day” at Capmeadow Business Park. However, when he arrives at work, he quickly discovers that it isn’t “take-your-daughter-to-work day”, nor has it ever been. Nobody knows what he’s talking about. Soon after, Hen vanishes somewhere in the labyrinthine depths of the business park, raising questions about whether Tom brought her there at all.
Deeply surreal and satirical, Pester’s debut is a James Herbert-inflected dismantling of office culture and corporate sprawl. As we descend further into its rabbit hole, the novel gradually reveals itself not as a straightforward prose narrative, but as a collection of interview transcripts annotated by a mysterious “archivist” in the far future. While Tom endures his day from hell, the Capmeadow Business Park is undergoing a vast and inexplicable “expansion project”.
Unmoored from any recognisable reality, the complex begins to sprawl into other realms. One evocative paragraph-length chapter describes the streets being “chewed at the edges” by a stray dog, only for the ground to heal and grow over itself. In the distance, a strange mound rises, “preparing to become a building of some kind”.
Decades seem to pass in Capmeadow at the blink of an eye and a strange mist haunts the complex. Any attempt to visualise the business park in the reader’s mind is nearly impossible. Consequently, The Expansion Project is a work that asks more questions than it answers. Pester puts a lot of faith in his readers.
When the novel is in full flow and constants such as time and location are no longer identifiable, there is little for the reader to grasp on to. You have to put your total trust in Pester and, sometimes, that can result in sections where you feel like you’re just reading words on a page. However, as an alienation effect, it works well.
The Expansion Projectby Ben Pester is out now (Granta, £16.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.
