The Delivery
A Novel
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
Enter the world of the Delivery Boy, who must peddle his way to 5-star customer ratings—and, perhaps, freedom—in novelist and graphic designer Peter Mendelsund’s The Delivery.
Countries go wrong, sometimes, and sometimes the luckier citizens of those countries have a chance to escape and seek refuge in another country—a country that might itself be in the process of going wrong.
In the bustling indifference of an unnamed city, one such citizen finds himself trapped working for a company that makes its money dispatching an army of undocumented refugees to bring the well-off men and women of this confounding metropolis their dinners. Whatever he might have been at home, this citizen is now a Delivery Boy: member of a new and invisible working class, pedaling his power-assist bike through traffic hoping for a decent tip and a five star rating.
He is decidedly a Delivery Boy; sometimes he even feels like a Delivery Baby; certainly he's not yet a Delivery Man, though he'll have to "man-up" if he wants to impress N.—the aloof dispatcher who sends him his orders and helps him with his English.
Can our hero avoid the wrath of his Supervisor, get the girl, and escape his indentured servitude? Can someone in his predicament ever get a happy ending? Who gets to decide? And who's telling this story, anyway?
Harrowing and hilarious, The Delivery is a fable for and about our times: an exploration of the ways language and commerce unites and isolates every one of us, native and immigrant both.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mendelsund (Same Same) explores identity, community, and the past's power to influence the future in his stunning latest. In a bustling city, an unnamed food delivery boy lives on tips and star ratings, and sleeps in the warehouse that handles his assignments. A brusque woman named N. manages him, overseen by an ominous male supervisor. The delivery boy frequently remembers his past in an unnamed country ruled by a strongman, where he played in a youth orchestra and had a crush on a French horn player. When the delivery boy gives N. a necklace, he doesn't get the reaction he'd hoped for, and both are compromised in the eyes of the supervisor. As images from delivery boy's past become more frequent, such as details of the "tyrant" who ruled the country he fled from, the narrative becomes looser and offers up clues about why he became a refugee. Mendelsund conveys the delivery boy's experiences and memories in brief crisp cuts separated by ample white space, where what's not said takes on great importance. The author's playful sense of form and command of language make for an original and provocative novel.
