A modest tongue-in-cheek comedy that satirizes dead end jobs, officious supervisors clinging to their scrap of authority, insular scientific research communities, and perhaps, it can be said, the literature of unnamable and ancient existential dread embodied in my consciousness by HP Lovecraft.

A large research institute in a polar region has been abandoned and its scientists extricated - save for one mysterious presence. Sent in by the corporate board is a three person team of caretakers who are given weekly tasks, communicated by helicopter drop. These tasks include: opening all the doors to check for appropriate door opening volume. Sitting in all the chairs and making reasonable movements in them to check for stability. Placing golf balls on all tables to check for levelness. Etc.

Hart, the supervisor, treats these tasks with the utmost seriousness and conscientiousness. He is also quite keen to assert his small amount of authority over the other two. A source of humor, but: people generally want to find meaning in their work and avoid the feeling of alienation from their labor, as difficult as this may be in many categories of employment in modern society. It is hard not to feel empathy with him, with each of them, when his construction of meaning is punctured by seeing it through the eyes of an outsider (the remaining scientist):

I feel suddenly embarrassed. The efficiency with which we’ve arranged the chairs, sat upon the chairs, and shifted our weight upon the chairs - a system of which, moments ago, I’d felt exceedingly proud - suddenly seems so stupid, so trivial. These tasks feel crucial, because all involved treat them as such. But Gilroy is not a part of that system, and his continued presence recasts everything. They’re just chairs, and we’re just sitting in them. That is my job this week: I sit, professionally.

The caretaking team has been warned to never leave the building, as strange effects have been discovered to happen to people who do. Outside is a flat landscape of pure white snow in all directions. But then something is seen from a window, that had not been there before. What is it? Where did it come from? Is it stationary or moving? Is it interfering with the building’s electricity? Is it affecting their minds and their sanity?

Well, the answer here is definitively not Lovecraftian. Alas! The book winds up its humorous satire of modern work through use of an extraordinary setting that, in the end, is just another example of corporate interest at work. No ancient horror, just a Board of Directors. Best treated by modern lampoon. ( )

This is a weird little novel. Three workers at the Northern Institute, a fictional research institution set in a snowbound, cold region, carry out a series of apparently endless, monotonous maintenance tasks. Hart, the seniormost, agonizes about his lack of management skills, taking refuge in a series of corporate superhero novels, in which the hero solves dramatic conflicts through personnel management techniques. Cline, a significantly more competent worker, is tormented by a mysterious object that appears in the snow outside, one day, and tries unsuccessfully to get everyone else to care about it, even while Hart feels threatened by her competence. Gibbs does as he's told. Every week, their boss, Kay, sends a series of tasks - open and close all the doors to check them, place golf balls on tables to make sure they are flat, and so on. As the thing in the snow slowly consumes their attention, they fall behind on their tasks.

The book is clearly intended to be a satire of the workplace, with Beckettian undertones (as Beckett said in Waiting for Godot, "Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful."). As satires go, it's heavy-handed and unsubtle. The author could have chosen to make the point, instead of dropping it on the reader's head like an anvil, but we increasingly live in the sort of world where the obvious is valorised, and the complex regarded as necessarily elitist. And so here we are. ( )

Grim. And funny. ( )

The Thing in the Snow by Sean Adams is a highly recommended novel which is a satirical and psychological examination of the workplace.

The Northern Institute is a seven story research facility in an environment of permanent snow and ice. The researchers have all left the building and three caretakers, Hart, the supervisor, Gibbs, and Cline, and one mysterious researcher, Gilroy, are left in the building. Hart, Gibbs, and Cline do weekly tasks assigned by Kay to keep the building in working order. These are sent to them in a folder along with their weekly supplies which are dropped off via a weekly helicopter. Their weekly tasks are mundane, repetitious assignments, such as checking every door in the building for squeaks, etc, or sit on every chair to ensure its stability.

After opening their day with coffee and light conversation in Hart's office, the three begin their tasks. They usually start with the first floor, the first two floors are buried in the snow, and work their way upwards. Hart embraces his role as the leader, so when Gibbs and Cline bring up the thing in the snow, he isn't thriller about it and finds it an unnecessary distraction. Those two, however, are mesmerized by it. But then it seems that other things might be a bit off in the building. Are the lights really flickering oddly? Is the thing moving?

Hart is the narrator of the novel, so we experience and view everything through his perceptions and point of view. He is also the only developed character. The pace of the novel is slow and plodding throughout, but is surprisingly appealing and humorous, especially if you have ever experienced work place drama and distractions. There are many things that could be "the thing in the snow" at work places.

This novel is a pure satirical and psychological study of isolation, obsession, ineffective bureaucracy, distractions, and meaningless tasks in a work place. The narrative takes, examining isolation, obsession, and paranoia in a mundane, repetitious environment. It is not an action packed horror novel or even especially creepy. It does tackle the toll of monotony and isolation in one's life and can be surprisingly funny at times.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of William Morrow.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2022/12/the-thing-in-snow.html
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5171158032 ( )

Sean Adam’s follow up to his debut The Heap expounds further on his satire of pointless bureaucracy and mindless obedience to authority. As in his first outing, Adams places the setting in an amorphous future wasteland containing remnants of a decimated civilization. Even the name of the abandoned research facility is meaningless. The Northern Institute is stripped bare of its own history and significance, now a shell surrounded by obliterating snow. The novel’s characters are roughly hewn with no backgrounds or depth, serving as drones for the repetitive plot about inane maintenance tasks. The narrator has willingly reduced his own identity to that of a robotic, prototypical middle-manager. There is a faceless authority that disinterestedly deposits provisions and assigns tasks for the Institute’s caretakers—as remote and inaccessible as any supreme power. Without the usual markers of time and physical borders, the free-floating existence of the inhabitants requires the creation of arbitrary measures to assuage existential anxiety. When an unknown object suddenly appears, it disrupts the entire system, leaving the unmoored characters to careen into obsession and paranoia. The Thing in the Snow is itself a maddening exercise—the reader is lulled into a stupor by the granular description of boring assignments and circular interactions. A commentary on the necessity of basic curiosity and adaptability, Adam’s second novel succeeds at being at once stultifying and captivating.

Thanks to the author, Harper Collins and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an unbiased review. ( )