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E: A Novel by Matt Beaumont

Synopsis:

A fast-paced, wickedly funny tale of office back-stabbing and corporate intrigue that unfolds in a succession of escalating e-mails.

Carla Browne-1/5/00, 3:05 pm
to: All Departments
re: I’m leaving now . . . but before I go there are some things you should know . . . !!!!

Set in a London ad agency desperate to land a coveted big account, e follows the bureaucratic bungling, cutthroat maneuvers, and outrageous sexual antics of a group of Miller-Shanks employees as they scheme, lie, lust, and claw their way up (and down) the company ladder.

Written by a former advertising copywriter, this hilarious, dead-on-target novel marks the debut of a hip and exciting new voice in contemporary fiction. With the click of a mouse, Matt Beaumont brings the novel of letters into the twenty-first century, turning his merciless, unerring eye on today’s Machiavellian corporate culture-with uproarious results.

Rachel Stevenson, Personnel-1/5/00, 3:09 pm
to: Chandra Kapoor cc: David Crutton
re: Urgent: Please delete Carla Browne’s ID from e-mail with immediate effect. Thank you.

This book was recommended to me as a friend who loved this book. However, I didn’t enjoy this book very much. The story is told through e-mails so you do not really get a chance to get to know the characters for who they are. What the reader does see is an office where people do not like each other very much and are all out to make themselves look the best. There is the boss who can’t send emails without sending them to everyone who works for the company, even though who work abroad; the secretaries who all back-stab each other and sleep around and the head of department who stole ideas from others.

This book is full of lies, swearing and disaster. The company is trying to launch a new campaign but the staff don’t appear to be very good and the ideas being used are stolen from some students and being passed off as their own. We see disaster abroad with models falling sick and their implants exploding on aeroplanes. There were some funny moments in this book, but this is not a story that portrays humans and office work well. Are people really this horrid? I found some of it hard to believe – some of the characters were extremely two-faced and others were just idiots.

It didn’t take long to read this as the story is broken up into emails, most of them short. There wasn’t a character I liked the most, I just carried on reading to see what would happen to this horrendous company. I don’t have much to say about this book. I didn’t think it was that good and probably would not recommend it. I would only give this 2/5.