I'm Natalie Moore. I fell in love with soap operas when I was just five years old, and I still

watch them. Their television's longest scripted series and have zero reruns. Now let me tell you,

soap operas aren't just some silly art form. They are significant. In this season of making,

Stories Without End from WBEZ Chicago.

Join me as I share how the genre began, their social impact, and why these stories endure.

Listen wherever you get your podcast.

From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Greta Johnson, and this is The Nerdat Book Club.

It's just like a regular book club, except sometimes the author stops by.

It is the month of January, and our book this month is Molly McGee's strange and surreal debut novel, Jonathan Abernathy.

You Are Kind.

Our protagonist is Jonathan Abernathy, whose life is completely subsumed by debt.

He inherited debt from his parents. He has student loans. It's all very precarious. Rent is tricky.

Food is scarce. So when a very bizarre and mysterious job opportunity arises, he can't exactly say no. The job is dream auditor and the gig opens up a whole new

world of both literal and symbolic misery. Dream auditors go into other people's dreams and remove the

things that are making them anxious or depressed so that they can work more effectively the next day. This is one of those books

where the absurd ends up perfectly illuminating reality. And that is all I am going to say for now

because I want this conversation with Molly to be spoiler-free. Molly, welcome to NERDAP.

Thank you for having me. It's an honor to be here.

Oh, it's an honor to have you.

So I would love to talk about how you wrote the dreams themselves because they're so surreal.

I listened to the audiobook version of this. I love the audio book.

It was just like, like you're just on such a wild ride, you know?

...