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The Guardian
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Expansion Project by Ben Pester review
'I knew she wouldn't leave the floor, but still I felt the slow panic coming on. A supermarket form of dread – you expect to find the lost child in the next aisle, but the next aisle is empty, so you push on to the next … [until] there are not enough aisles left to give you hope.' Tom Crowley's eight-year-old daughter Hen (not her real name, but also not short for Henrietta) has gone missing, somewhere in the Piranesi-esque corridors of Tom's workplace, Capmeadow Business Park. It's bring your daughter to work day, and it's not the first time that morning that he's lost her. But this feels different – to Tom, and to the reader, who might briefly suspect that they are in a contemporary update of Ian McEwan's The Child in Time. Tom soon finds Hen, then loses her again – 'properly gone this time' – or doesn't. She is nowhere to be found on Capmeadow's entry records or CCTV, because she may never have been there in the first place. Tom is convinced that he had an email about bring your daughter to work day, but he can't find it, and no one else seems to have heard of it. When confronted with the evidence, he eventually signs a corporate-Stalinist affidavit 'officially agreeing' that he never brought Hen to Capmeadow. But he continues to believe that he did, and becomes a kind of living ghost stalking the business park. Ben Pester's first novel, following his 2021 story collection Am I in the Right Place?, is formally a collage, put together decades or centuries in the future by an unnamed 'Archivist' who is meant to be studying the business park's 'Expansion Project' but keeps getting drawn into individual lives such as Tom's, and thus becomes an accidental practitioner of 'history from below'. It shares the collection's office setting and surrealist approach: Am I in the Right Place? could just as easily have been the title of the novel. Workplace novels are everywhere. It is to fiction, rather than journalism, that we can turn for fine-grained accounts of life in big-box stores (Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted), technical writers' collectives (Joseph O'Neill's Godwin) or tidal-energy startups (Alexander Starritt's Drayton and Mackenzie). The world of work seems to have supplanted marriage and the family as the place where novelists examine questions of identity and relationships. The Expansion Project is an office novel of a very different kind, as abstract as, say, Help Wanted is concrete. If it can seem as though Pester has no interest in what Tom actually does (he works in the 'engineering division', and Cath Corbett, who may or may not be his boss, describes him as a 'content specialist'), or in what the Expansion Project entails (we learn little about Capmeadow and nothing at all about the firms presumably based there), then that is the point. There are costs to this level of abstraction. A novel about every workplace risks being one about no actual workplace. Capmeadow, with its line managers and endless emails and 'mindfulness apps' and dehumanising HR, presiding over a 'managerial class' who wear expensive suits and drink £10 bottles of still water, runs dangerously close to cliche – cliches that rehearse the prejudices of the novel's putative readership. Pester's rendering of corporate-bureaucratic language ('forbidden' becomes 'non-accepted', and so on) also feels rather commonplace. The destabilising power of The Expansion Project is not satirical – at least not in the comic sense. That power lies, firstly, in Pester's protagonist. Ultimately defeated, Tom Crowley thinks that his family see him as a 'painless wound', to be tolerated but not thought about. The reader knows better. From his struggles to convert the overpowering love he feels for his children into competent parenting, to his attempts to survive and contribute at Capmeadow, Tom is all pain – giver and recipient. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion But, as we learn over the course of the novel, he is the canary in the data mine. The total collapse of Tom's sense of stable, known reality – of the boundaries between physical and digital, memory and dream, work and life – lies in wait for the other characters, and for us. The landscape of Capmeadow – 'cloud-forestry' visible through the windows, a sculpture-filled Resilience Garden – is only a logical extension of an AI-generated Zoom background. The Expansion Project is less an indictment of late capitalism than a horror story about screen society, in which sensations are constant and images refuse to separate into the real and imagined. The Expansion Project by Ben Pester is published by Granta (£16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Expansion Project by Ben Pester review
'I knew she wouldn't leave the floor, but still I felt the slow panic coming on. A supermarket form of dread – you expect to find the lost child in the next aisle, but the next aisle is empty, so you push on to the next … [until] there are not enough aisles left to give you hope.' Tom Crowley's eight-year-old daughter Hen (not her real name, but also not short for Henrietta) has gone missing, somewhere in the Piranesi-esque corridors of Tom's workplace, Capmeadow Business Park. It's bring your daughter to work day, and it's not the first time that morning that he's lost her. But this feels different – to Tom, and to the reader, who might briefly suspect that they are in a contemporary update of Ian McEwan's The Child in Time. Tom soon finds Hen, then loses her again – 'properly gone this time' – or doesn't. She is nowhere to be found on Capmeadow's entry records or CCTV, because she may never have been there in the first place. Tom is convinced that he had an email about bring your daughter to work day, but he can't find it, and no one else seems to have heard of it. When confronted with the evidence, he eventually signs a corporate-Stalinist affidavit 'officially agreeing' that he never brought Hen to Capmeadow. But he continues to believe that he did, and becomes a kind of living ghost stalking the business park. Ben Pester's first novel, following his 2021 story collection Am I in the Right Place?, is formally a collage, put together decades or centuries in the future by an unnamed 'Archivist' who is meant to be studying the business park's 'Expansion Project' but keeps getting drawn into individual lives such as Tom's, and thus becomes an accidental practitioner of 'history from below'. It shares the collection's office setting and surrealist approach: Am I in the Right Place? could just as easily have been the title of the novel. Workplace novels are everywhere. It is to fiction, rather than journalism, that we can turn for fine-grained accounts of life in big-box stores (Adelle Waldman's Help Wanted), technical writers' collectives (Joseph O'Neill's Godwin) or tidal-energy startups (Alexander Starritt's Drayton and Mackenzie). The world of work seems to have supplanted marriage and the family as the place where novelists examine questions of identity and relationships. The Expansion Project is an office novel of a very different kind, as abstract as, say, Help Wanted is concrete. If it can seem as though Pester has no interest in what Tom actually does (he works in the 'engineering division', and Cath Corbett, who may or may not be his boss, describes him as a 'content specialist'), or in what the Expansion Project entails (we learn little about Capmeadow and nothing at all about the firms presumably based there), then that is the point. There are costs to this level of abstraction. A novel about every workplace risks being one about no actual workplace. Capmeadow, with its line managers and endless emails and 'mindfulness apps' and dehumanising HR, presiding over a 'managerial class' who wear expensive suits and drink £10 bottles of still water, runs dangerously close to cliche – cliches that rehearse the prejudices of the novel's putative readership. Pester's rendering of corporate-bureaucratic language ('forbidden' becomes 'non-accepted', and so on) also feels rather commonplace. The destabilising power of The Expansion Project is not satirical – at least not in the comic sense. That power lies, firstly, in Pester's protagonist. Ultimately defeated, Tom Crowley thinks that his family see him as a 'painless wound', to be tolerated but not thought about. The reader knows better. From his struggles to convert the overpowering love he feels for his children into competent parenting, to his attempts to survive and contribute at Capmeadow, Tom is all pain – giver and recipient. Sign up to Inside Saturday The only way to get a look behind the scenes of the Saturday magazine. Sign up to get the inside story from our top writers as well as all the must-read articles and columns, delivered to your inbox every weekend. after newsletter promotion But, as we learn over the course of the novel, he is the canary in the data mine. The total collapse of Tom's sense of stable, known reality – of the boundaries between physical and digital, memory and dream, work and life – lies in wait for the other characters, and for us. The landscape of Capmeadow – 'cloud-forestry' visible through the windows, a sculpture-filled Resilience Garden – is only a logical extension of an AI-generated Zoom background. The Expansion Project is less an indictment of late capitalism than a horror story about screen society, in which sensations are constant and images refuse to separate into the real and imagined. The Expansion Project by Ben Pester is published by Granta (£16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
ABC News
08-07-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Why the RBA held rates
Mortgage-borrowers across the country have been left shell-shocked by the RBA's decision to keep the cash rate steady at 3.85 per cent. Treasurer Jim Chalmers says "it's not the result millions of Australians were hoping for." But while the Government has been at pains to stress the RBA makes decisions independently, with global instability continuing, is this a sign there are more rough economic waters ahead of us? Patricia Karvelas and Tom Crowley break it all down on Politics Now. Got a burning question? Got a burning political query? Send a short voice recording to PK and Fran for Question Time at thepartyroom@
Belfast Telegraph
18-06-2025
- Business
- Belfast Telegraph
US chicken chain to open first drive thru in Northern Ireland
Popeyes will open its first drive-thru restaurant at The Junction in Antrim on Monday, July 7 at 11am, with dine-in also available. A spokesperson also said the first three people in the queue on the opening day are in line to win free chicken sandwiches for a year. The first 50 customers on foot, and first 50 through the drive-thru, will win a free chicken sandwich. Tom Crowley, CEO at Popeyes UK, said: 'We're thrilled to be announcing our first drive thru location in Northern Ireland, following the success of our Belfast Forestside opening last year. "Northern Ireland remains a key focus in our expansion plans, and we're looking forward to bringing a taste of New Orleans to the people of Antrim and the surrounding areas.' The US chain opened its first NI restaurant at Forestside Shopping Centre in south Belfast in September. The business, which was founded in New Orleans in 1972, first set up shop in the UK in November 2021, and has since opened in more than 50 locations. The menu includes chicken sandwich, hot wings, tenders, original southern-style savoury biscuits and gravy and Cajun rice.
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Crowley's First Avance Class Vessel Quetzal Begins Maiden Commercial Voyage
Containership Offers Faster, Frequent Shipping for U.S. and Central America JACKSONVILLE, Fla., April 14, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Crowley's new LNG-powered containership Quetzal has successfully begun its inaugural commercial voyage, opening the company's next era of faster, frequent ocean shipping with a new class of vessels for the U.S., Central America and the Dominican Republic. With capacity for up to 1,400 20-foot container equivalent units (TEUs), Quetzal and its three forthcoming sister Avance Class ships will provide more cargo capacity while using lower-emissions liquefied natural gas (LNG) for fuel. Quetzal and its sister ships were specifically designed to accommodate a variety of container sizes, including 300 refrigerated container unit plugs. The Avance Class – pronounced in Spanish "ah-bahn-seh" with the English meaning of advance – is uniquely suited to quickly transport perishable goods like food and pharmaceuticals, as well as retail products, apparel, breakbulk cargo and other essential items. Quetzal initiated service on April 11-12 at Port of Santo Tomás, Guatemala. Named to honor Central American culture and communities, the Avance Class vessels, built by Hyundai Mipo Dockyard of Korea, are all expected to enter service in 2025 from owner Eastern Pacific Shipping, operating under long-term charters to Crowley. "Quetzal and the Avance Class ships represent the next generation of Crowley's innovation and leadership in supply chain solutions for international shipping in the Caribbean Basin," said Tom Crowley, Chairman and CEO. "The vessels provide frequent service and greater capabilities to deliver cargo at peak timing while carrying forward Crowley's high operational standards. With the company's decades of service in Central America and the Dominican Republic, the Avance Class is a strategic investment by Crowley in the future of this international trade, setting a new standard for environmental efficiency." Quetzal also builds on Crowley's commitment to advancing LNG as a solution in the maritime industry's energy transition. Crowley's Avance Class ships feature high-pressure ME-GI engines by MAN Energy Solutions, which reduce methane slippage to negligible levels and make these vessels the most environmentally efficient in their category. LNG itself lowers vessel greenhouse gas emissions, such as sulfur oxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide, while eliminating particulate matter compared with conventional diesel fuel. About Crowley Crowley is a private-held, U.S.-owned and -operated maritime, energy and logistics solutions company. For more than 130 years, its portfolio of businesses has provided innovative ocean and land transportation services for the commercial and government sectors. As a global ship owner and operator, Crowley serves 36 nations and island territories and is one of the leading employers of U.S. mariners. Visit to learn more. Media Contact David DeCamp, Crowley, 904-727-4263, Torey Vogel, Crowley, 904-726-4536, View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Crowley
