Pulpy and Midge

Pulpy and Midge is a very nice book about very nice people. Pulpy and Midge are gentle, kind, and in an enviable amount of love. Maybe I don't read enough books about nice people, but Pulpy really got to me.

Here is how nice Pulpy is: He wipes his feet at the door; he is kind to the receptionist; he feels guilty about not remembering her name. Sure, Pulpy can be too nice. But so what if he lets people finish his sentences?

Quirky office lit

Jessica Westhead’s charmingly predictable Pulpy and Midge

by Cherine Badwi in Books

If there is a genre called 'office lit' -- and if there’s not, there should be -- Jessica Westhead’s debut novel Pulpy and Midge would fall squarely in that camp. The novel reads like an extended prose version of a Dilbert cartoon or a series of episodes of The Office.

Imagine a cubical existence. Sketch in a Patrick Bateman-esque boss with an oversexed wife prowling your every move. Now add a sticky note with a cynical and lonely receptionist angling for a date. Ho ho! says Dan the boss man. The timid, clumsy Pulpy lives in this world with his ice-dancing, candle-selling wife, Midge. In the span of a few weeks their solid (and rather PG) marriage is challenged by the absurd, domineering demands of the new boss, Dan, and his wife Beatrice, who’s corrosive relationship and life-style destabilize Pulpy and Midge’s seemingly perfect one. Ho ho!

Never mix business with pleasure. That's the moral of Jessica Westhead's new office novel Pulpy and Midge, whose titular couple strives to maintain a healthy balance of work and home life. Of course, balance can be heard to come by in a story about wife-swapping with the boss.

Pulpy is a pushover worker bee in an anonymous office, while Midge is his adorable, candle-obsessed wife. Together they present a sweet and sticky ideal of marital fidelity.

This article is about dreams come true. Jessica Westhead has written a hilarious novel called Pulpy and Midge, from which she read at last Monday’s Cooked and Eaten reading series. Her book came out just last week from Coach House Books. For Jessica Westhead, that is a dream come true. But here’s the better news: Westhead is a Trent graduate. She has an English degree. She works as a writer and editor. Take heart, fellow English majors! Westhead has become the hero of Trent humanities students.