Falling Sideways: A Novel

There seems to be no shortage of business at the Tank, a high-profile firm in Copenhagen. There are meetings to attend, memos to write, colleagues to undermine. But when the Tank's nefarious CEO announces a round of downsizing, everyone becomes exposed and the game-playing begins in deadly earnest. Top executive Frederick Breathwaite suspects his days might be numbered, and is frantically trying to ensure a foothold on the career ladder for his son Jes. Harald Jaeger, estranged from his wife and daughters, harbours desperate passions for an alarming number of women (including, dangerously, the Tank's married financial officer). Lost in his amorous fantasies, he has somehow managed to catch the CEO's eye - as a possible replacement for Breathwaite. Meanwhile the CEO's son Adam should be following in his father's alpha-male footsteps but instead is head-over-heels in puppy love with his au pair. And in a nearby shoe repair shop, Jes, who personally can't imagine anything worse than his father's corporate life, is pursuing a very different kind of future. As the city settles into autumn, a season of brittle days and foreboding nights, the impending downsizing causes a ripple effect that touches not just every employee in the Tank but their spouses, children and lovers as well. Sharp, funny but remarkably tender, Falling Sideways is a shrewdly observed tale of ambition and anxiety, of backstabbing and backsliding, of office politics and family affairs.

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