Company
by Max Barry

I am a fan of Max Barry so it’s no surprise that I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It did take me longer to get into than his previous novels Syrup and Jennifer Government because the setting was so very…corporate. But then that’s what it’s all about: corporations.

This is a comedy, a satire really, about big business. Barry takes lots of extreme examples of corporate practices (including some that must surely be entirely his own imagination, right?) and crams them in to one extremely funny book.

Good satire uses characters and situations that are recognisable to the reader. You know that people like this exist, though in most cases you hope to not come across too many examples of them in real life. It’s the combination of extremes, plus some skillful writing, that makes it funny.

This can lead to ill-formed caricatures that fail to emotionally engage the reader, which isn’t the end of the world for me but can be offputting for some people. The characters in Company are definitely three-dimensional but I must admit to lacking any great interest in their fates. The book has an epilogue featuring some of the key characters that to me felt superfluous – the previous chapter had a better, more final ending. But no doubt other readers will appreciate the confirmation of who ended up where.

You may notice that I haven’t mentioned the plot at all yet. This is because there is a plot development early on that is pivotal to the story but I really hesitate to reveal it to potential readers. So if you haven’t read the book yet and think that maybe you might (and I highly recommend it) then you should stop reading this review here. No, really. But come back when you’ve read it and let me know what you thought.

So, for those of you who have already read the book or really don’t mind spoilers, I will continue.

It was suggested to me that this novel isn’t true satire because Barry uses a plot device to explain the sheer number of and extremity of the management techniques that this company – Zephyr Holdings Inc. – uses. It turns out that Zephyr is a fake conpany being used – against the knowledge of its employees – as a testbed for management techniques. The novel starts with the first of day of work for new employee Stephen Jones. His suspicions are quickly aroused when he discovers that no one can tell him what Zephyr actually does. He is an idealistic recent graduate and is appalled when he stumbles on the truth. At first he lets himself be persuaded that it’s not so bad, that the findings of research here go into extremely popular management textbooks and therefore any progress they make is good for the whole world. However, his conversations with those in charge soon dispell this myth.

I really enjoyed the brief scenes between Jones and his sister as he tries to explain his new job or Zephyr itself and it’s so clear that the situation is bizarre. They are a great contrast with daily life at the office where hundreds of employees accept the weirdness of Zephyr. It’s an excellent device that allows Barry to really push the depiction of a big international company to extremes without it being unbelievable. This isn’t about humdrum pointlessness like Office Space, this is about companies treating their employees badly and knowing that they are doing so, in the name of productivity or cost-effectiveness or whatever the latest buzzword is.

There are some interesting subplots, such as the salesman obsessed with finding out who stole his doughnut (and I mean obsessed) or the woman who falls in love with her customers. There’s also some good variations on office romance, with a few different angles covered.

So is it satire if you have an excuse for the far-fetched plot? I think so. And if not, this is still a very well observed, archly funny novel about a situation that we’re all quite happy to see picked apart.

Published 2007 by Vintage
ISBN: 978-1-4000-7937-7