Julius Julius

A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Summer

With biting wit, Aurora Stewart de Peña satirizes the creative industry she’s spent years in. From the people who brought you the invention of advertising comes Julius Julius, a rambling architectural wonder, outpost of the very first ad man of ancient Pompeii, built on the backs of generations of creative survivors who just want to lie on the floor of a conference room and cry about the lumber account without being sexually harassed.

Welcome to the world’s oldest advertising agency, where ghosts control the board room AC, an ancient executive assistant runs a cave full of thousand year old billboards, and there are bones in the walls.

In a trio of voices from different time periods, we move through the mythical Agency, interrogating the process of stoking desire for a living. We meet the Senior Brand Anthropologist, who’s being surprised by dirty bars of Irish Spring she can’t remember buying, the Creative Director, whose ascent involved an ad campaign starring his dead best friend, and the Account Supervisor, whose only crime is not being a genius. (But the Fisherman Jack Tuna Campaign was her idea, despite what it says on the awards submissions.)

Stewart de Peña’s debut novel reveals the cracks in the veneer of the creative industries, and the crisis of consciousness underneath in a novel full of compassion, humour, and blonde sausage dogs.