Disappearing off the Face of the Earth

ebook

By David Cohen

cover image of Disappearing off the Face of the Earth

Sign up to save your library

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

   Not today

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Download Libby on the App Store Download Libby on Google Play

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:

Loading...

'David Cohen takes suburban life and turns it into a warped comedy with a body count, letting weirdness in, compellingly, irresistibly, until our sense of what's real is flickering on and off like a dodgy fluoro tube.' - Nick Earls

Hideaway Self Storage, located just off Brisbane's M1, is in decline. But manager Ken Guy and his assistant Bruce carry on with their daily rituals even as the facility falls apart around them. Lately, however, certain tenants have been disappearing off the face of the earth, leaving behind units full of valuable items. Ken has no idea where these rent defaulters have gone but he thinks he might be able to turn their abandoned 'things' into a nice little earner that could help save his business. But the disappearances are accompanied by strange occurrences such as Bruce's inexplicable late-night excursions, Ken's intensifying aversion to fluorescent lights, and Ken's girlfriend's intensifying aversion to Ken. While further along the motorway, construction of a rival facility Pharaoh's Tomb Self Storage, part of a nationwide franchise hints at a  mysterious past and a precarious future.

A surprisingly funny study of physical and mental deterioration, David Cohen's second novel is never quite what it seems. Sharply attuned to the absurdities of contemporary urban life, it is that rare literary beast, a comic drama that is at once intelligent and suspenseful, humorous and deep.

'Few writers write about the world of work, and fewer still with the skill and mordant wit of David Cohen. Funny, disturbing, and wonderfully strange.' - Ryan O' Neill 

Disappearing off the Face of the Earth