Attachments

Attachments is set during the dot-com era of 1999, where Lincoln O'Neill is hired to monitor employee email at a newspaper, only to find himself reading the ongoing correspondence between two colleagues, Beth and Jennifer, with whom he becomes quietly obsessed. What begins as an ethically compromised premise becomes a comedy of longing as Lincoln falls in love with a woman he has never met but knows intimately.

Rebecca Lowman's narration keeps the novel's tonal balance between comedy and genuine feeling precise. Her handling of the email exchanges, which are the novel's structural spine and most entertaining element, gives them a natural conversational flow, and Lincoln's hapless interiority benefits from the audio format's ability to sustain a character's inner life without visual interruption.