ALMOST: a novel

by Dan McNay

A raw and tender novel with a powerful jaw-dropping narrative climax that will stay with you forever.The Los Angeles university campus where Violet works is undergoing restructuring. Her friend Sandy has lost her job and the atmosphere has become toxic.Violet develops a romantic bond with Sandy and begins to form a picture of a happy future, despite all the problems. When Sandy’s son gets involved with a gang, however, a sudden violent event steals the future she hoped for.Her life thrown upside down, Violet now lurches forward on a hazardous path to control her destiny by any means.ALMOST has a slow build-up of screen-gripping intensity leading to a dramatic, unexpected finale. Look out for LET HER GO, LET HER GO, UNDER THE COLD STONES and THE SMALLEST CREATURES, three other suspense titles by Dan McNay available on Kindle and in paperback.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 31, 2021

About the author

Dan McNay has lived in LA 25 years and for a lot of that time has worked at USC. He has been active in numerous writing workshops and studied in USC’s Masters of Professional Writing Program. He has purchased millions of dollars worth of computers for USC, won the staff speed calculator competition at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, paddled around Catalina Island with a bunch of Boy Scouts, sold used and rare books in the French Quarter, collected blood from unborn calves in a Utah slaughter house, lectured on Robbe-Grillet, worked the night shift in Monterey, San Francisco & Tucson, and owned and ran a cemetery in Illinois- not necessarily in that order.

Reviews

[Ira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Working in a university comes sugar-coated with imageries of benevolence and paternalism, all benefits included, and equality and diversity are presented as the passcode for making it a success. An ethos of care and looking after one another pursuing the good of knowledge science objectivity and justice permeates every pore of the beautiful architecture of these high-standing institutions. Except universities are anything but the image they project.

Nepotism, the barely-concealed incompetence of bullies, nasty personal vendettas, racism, and a pernicious middle-class superiority complex mixed with their fear of being exposed as the fraud they are creates toxic environments for those who come from outside and will be only tolerated as outsiders, and for that they must also bow and kneel and never dare asking for their fair share of anything.

In Almost, Violet says no. And more.

Beautifully told, both sad and funny, this is the story of people on the verge who try, fail and try differently to make something of their circumstances, however unfavourable. A must read!

[Erik Empson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in a Los Angeles in the early nineties when the Justice for Janitors movement was taking off, ALMOST is the tale of two Filipina women - Violet and Sandy - childhood friends who work at the university.

Despite the toxic workplace, the women form a strong romantic bond and begin to dream of a more stable life. Yet when Sandy loses her job, it is the beginning of a chain of events that will send Violet on a dangerous trajectory. As fate conspires against her, the stakes increase.

ALMOST is an immersive read about the everyday struggle between work and life, and how small seemingly inconsequential decisions can make opportunity slip from your grasp. Tenderly told, it will stay with you for some time.