Company

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With Jennifer Government (a New York Times Notable Fiction pick for 2003), Australian novelist Max Barry proved his knack for satirical social fiction. This whip-smart follow-up, one of the most hilarious send-ups of corporate culture we've ever read, is even better. Meet Stephen Jones, an eager-beaver new hire at Zephyr Holdings, a Seattle-based company with an indecipherable mission statement and an ambitious management training program. Jones's effort to learn exactly what it is that Zephyr does sends him up the corporate ladder, where he collides head-on with a dirty little company secret that changes everything. Barry parses to a tee the pettiness of office politics in an absurdist drama worthy of Samuel Beckett -- but with better barbs.

Stanley Bing

… an extremely funny, superbly observed take on organizational life. Its author, Max Barry, is a hilarious young Australian who acquired a bellyful of anger and a host of precision armaments when he worked for Hewlett-Packard, which, after the appearance of this novel, may have some long-term problems with recruitment. Barry has been inside. You can smell it in his prose, which is equally adept at capturing the vacuity of a corporate mission statement or the back-and-forth of neurotic middle-management weasels crunched in the vice of mandated staff cuts. He has lusted after the hot receptionist when he thought she wasn't looking, marveled at how the person in the corner office is the nuttiest beanbag on the floor, ruminated on compensation structures so convoluted that they actually encourage indolence.
— The Washington Post

Janet Maslin

In a book dedicated to Hewlett-Packard, which once made the silly, silly mistake of employing Mr. Barry, the secrets and lies of corporate culture are explored with sharp, absurdist precision. Joseph Heller did it better, but not by much. Mr. Barry, an Australian writer with a mad gleam and a college education in marketing, invents a rats' nest of warring departments and scheming, back-biting employees, all manipulated by a Senior Management staff of exceptional ruthlessness.
—The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

With broad strokes, Barry once again satirizes corporate America in his third caustic novel (after Jennifer Government). This time, he takes aim at the perennial corporate crime of turning people into cogs in a machine. Recent b-school grad Stephen Jones, a fresh-faced new hire at a Seattle-based holding company called Zephyr, jumps on the fast track to success when he's immediately promoted from sales assistant to sales rep in Zephyr's training sales department. "Don't try to understand the company. Just go with it," a colleague advises when Jones is flummoxed to learn his team sells training packages to other internal Zephyr departments. But unlike his co-workers, he won't accept ignorance of his employer's business, and his unusual display of initiative catapults him into the ranks of senior management, where he discovers the "customer-free" company's true, sinister raison d' tre. The ultracynical management team co-opts Jones with a six-figure salary and blackmail threats, but it's not long before he throws a wrench into the works. As bitter as break-room coffee, the novel eviscerates demeaning modern management techniques that treat workers as "headcounts." Though Barry's primary target is corporate dehumanization, he's at his funniest lampooning the suits that tread the stage, consumed by the sound and fury of office politics that signify nothing. (Jan.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-By turns amusing and wry, this novel is a pleasure to read. It opens with a view of a large corporation as seen by a new employee whose first day on the job is one of high suspense-one of the doughnuts for a staff meeting is missing. Moving beyond the usual cheap but funny shots taken at corporate life, Barry takes his tale to the next level. What if this giant maze for laboratory rats in which so many people work was actually just that? The characters are stereotypes but readers will sympathize with them, nonetheless.-Ted Westervelt, Library of Congress, Washington, DC Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A raucous black comedy about corporate management that's tailor-made for anybody who's ever gone to the office feeling like a lab rat. When Stephen Jones, fresh out of college, arrives at the Seattle headquarters of Zephyr Holdings, he's understandably eager to learn more about his new employer. Alas, Zephyr's official mission statement ("to build and consolidate leadership positions in its chosen markets") is no help, and his coworkers seem to spend more time investigating who stole a donut than actually working. In the first 70 pages, Barry (Jennifer Government, 2003, etc.) takes whacks at dysfunctional office culture, and the gags rarely rise above sitcom-level wackiness-one employee's attempt to claim stupidity as a disability is taken seriously by the HR department, for example. But the book enters some sublimely Kafkaesque territory once Jones discovers his employer's real purpose: Zephyr is, in fact, a training lab where new management theories are secretly tested on human subjects. If you change a project team's goals every few hours, how long will it take them to break? What's the best way to humiliate smokers and make them more productive? How do you threaten employees with layoffs while keeping up morale? Jones signs on for Project Alpha, under the wing of Eve Jantiss, a corporate functionary who's as callous and cutthroat as they come. But once Zephyr requires whole departments to be consolidated or garroted, a disgusted Jones begins to sabotage Project Alpha and foment open revolt at the company. Much of the rhetoric in later chapters about how Zephyr workers are human beings, not fungible parts, would pack a stronger punch if we got to know the characters better-many ofJones's coworkers are locked into simple subplots. But the author's shrewd observations about corporate life still register. Comic relief for any b-school grads (or Office Space fans) who've had their fill of Collins, Drucker and Peters.

From the Publisher

"A raucous black comedy about corporate management that's tailor-made for anybody who's ever gone to the office feeling like a lab rat...Comic relief for any b-school grads (or Office Space fans) who've had their fill of Collins, Druckerand Peters."