Hmm

Everybody agreed John was easy to work with. It was in writing.

John Tenant writes software for Brewbright, a Bristol start-up that makes kettles you can boil from your phone. He does it from a rented farmhouse near New Pitsligo, at a kitchen table, beside a purple stovetop kettle that whistles and has never once needed an update. He clears bugs faster than anybody, he passed his probation with flying colours, and he has a pay rise letter that says so.

Then he asks, very politely, for Wednesdays off.

Then the company announces a new colleague nobody knew was coming, and John, wondering what it means for the release he is leading, reacts with a single emoji.

What happens next takes place mostly in rooms John is not in, in messages he is not copied on, and in a shared document he will not know exists for almost a year. Because there is one thing every company forgets about the things it writes down: one day, somebody may ask to read them.

Hmm is a sharp, funny and painfully recognisable novel about remote work, culture decks, artificial intelligence and the polite machinery of an organisation deciding it has a problem. It is for anybody who has ever read a message twice and wondered what it really meant. From the author of Try Resetting the Router and The Least Useful Man in Scotland.