The title of Ottawa writer Christian McPherson’s debut novel has a double meaning. Most obviously, it refers to the hero, Colin MacDonald, and his fellow cubicle dwellers, who work as code monkeys for the fictional Ministry of Revenue Collection. But The Cube People is also the title of a science fiction novel Colin is trying to get published. Both this book and a Stephen King–style work-in-progress called Hungry Hole offer imaginative parallels to the bleak reality of Colin’s dehumanizing, bureaucratic existence.

The life-among-the-bean-counters part of McPherson’s book is well managed and entertaining, even if office comedy is by now familiar fictional terrain thanks to books such as Douglas Coupland’s JPod and Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End. Colin’s fellow employees are the usual set of eccentrics trying to escape the soul-destroying routine of their jobs, which in this case means ­coping with the absurdity of a “Paperless Office” directive and trying to avoid serving on the Refrigerator Committee. Not much work gets done, but Colin is too interested in his collection of rejection letters from Canadian small presses to really care.

The other main part of the novel deals with life on the home front, in particular Colin and his wife Sarah’s vigorous efforts to procreate. The hungry hole here is a cruder metaphor, and the humour at times a bit unsettling in its frank description of reproductive mechanics. But the comic evocation of domestic routines makes for an interesting counterpoint to the rest of the book.

What ties everything together is the character of Colin, a well-meaning, dutiful type who acts as a pivot of sanity for the chaos to swirl around. And despite the raw moments, the conclusion is a good-natured affirmation of his core family values.