Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Original, funny, close to life

Customer Rating:

When I first started reading I thought the "we" viewpoint would annoy me but having finished it ina matter of hours, I think the author has pulled it off with incredible skill. It's original, funny, close to life and all those things that a good book should be: the characters are absolutely fascinating and believable, the plot strands are very carefully woven together. I can understand those who don't want to read about work when they aren't there, but unlike working in my office, I really feel that it's telling me something new about the world. Very enjoyable.

Good but not as good as the hype

Customer Rating:

'We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fiteen.' This book is funny - about work in offices and in advertising. The characters are mainly cyphers. Our narrator is one of the gang but we gradually come to understand the different personalities as they live through being fired or the fear of being fired. The boss they all fear has breast cancer and part of the novel is her story in a very different voice which we later find is that of one the gang - an aspiring novelist. As others here have said the hype has been misleading but this is a funny and original novel - very good on the paranoia of office life.

Nagging feeling

Customer Rating:

I was taken in by the blurb on the cover and that probably set my expectations too high. The overriding feeling though, throughout reading this was that it is a poor, less funny book in the style of Douglas Coupland. If you loved this book (like so many people seemed to do) then try Microserfs and JPod by Coupland and see, in my opinion, how it should be done and how funny this kind of subject can be.

inventive but too long

Customer Rating:

I really enjoyed a lot of this book, perhaps not least because I know the advertising world a bit, but anyone who's worked in an office will recognise the petty intrigues, games and rituals that develop over time. It could have done with slightly harsher pruning from the editor I feel, but no doubt some of its repetition is to make the point about how repetitious office life is. Very funny in places, very sad in places and thoughtful throughout, this isn't the most up book you'll read, but it's worth a read nonetheless

That's how to write a book

Customer Rating:

I don't want to give the wrong impression; this is not a thriller, but finishing it somehow left me breathless. On reflection, it's the way you're sucked into the world of characters: warts and all characters, with possibly more bad points than good; they become your companions, and leaving them brings on a feeling of being wrenched away. The skill of the author brings life to seemingly mundane events, and they end up interesting because you're intrigued just as much as the advertising agency emplotees you are reading about. The pace is nimble and the style sublime; I don't want to say much else but read it and enjoy.