Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #15496 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The idea of the first e-mail novel could have been a disaster but instead is a minor comic triumph thanks to Matt Beaumont's E. The novel of letters goes back to Richardson, of course, but things have moved on from Regency rape to the lethal office politics of an advertising agency. The beleaguered protagonists may appear to be concerned with pitching for the Coca-Cola account but their real problem is watching their backs: the knives are out and everyone from head honcho David Crutton downwards is well aware that their careers are on the line. Another part of Beaumont's lineage in this unputdownable novel is the This Life school of detailed interpersonal observation: no one character is allowed to assume centre stage; people screw, argue and discuss professional responsibility while the reader slowly makes his mind up about them from the information conveyed in the increasingly frantic e-mails.

Matt Beaumont, though, is primarily a sharp and witty observer of the social scene, with caustic humour that leaps out of his characters' electronic missives. And we're pitched headlong into the situation: it's impossible not to find ourselves riveted by Rachel, James, Harriet, Daniel and all the rest of Beaumont's at-the-edge characters as they strive to achieve a common goal and sink deeper and deeper in the waste matter. But did anybody ever send an e-mail like this one from Lorraine, a woman out to get her own way?:

Two days in London and I'm in advertising. I went to a temp agency last week and they got me into this place called Miller Shanks. They did those shite ads for Kimbelle--you know, the Artist Formerly Known as Ginger Spice bungee jumping, looking like someone shoved a high voltage cable up her arse. I'm working for the CEO (posh for managing director). One of the lads thinks he's on for a shag but he looks too much like Bart Simpson (overbite, spiky hair and slightly jaundiced). Mind you, after a few Stellas he starts looking like Brad Pitt, so who knows?

Synopsis
An unforgettable first novel, an author to shout about, a campaign to ensure that everyone knows this is the funniest, sharpest read of the year. Consisting entirely of staff emails, e spends a fortnight in the company of Miller Shanks, an advertising agency that scales dizzying peaks of incompetence. Among the cast are a CEO with an MBA from the Joseph Stalin School of Management, a Creative Director who is a genius, if only in his own head, designers and copywriters driven by breasts, beer or Bach Flower Remedies, and secretaries who drip honey and spit blood. The novel is a tapestry of insincerity, backstabbing and bare-arsed bitchiness: that is to say, everyday office politics. Oh yes, and there is some work to be done too -- the quest for advertising's Eldorado, the Coca-Cola account. e is sleazy, scurrilous and scabrously funny. It also contains a first-class joke about the Pope and sound advice on the maintenance of industrial carpet tiles.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic, the best e:mail mickey take I've read
This book is side splitting fantastic. Better than 'Who moved my Blackberry'. The characters are superb, exagerated I agree, but all of us who've worked in Sales and Marketing organisations will have worked with / met various people in this superb piece of mickey take on 'E:mail' life in the office and 'Marketing Agencies'.

In fact I liked it so much I've bought a copy for my Marketing Director, and if he doesn't like it I'll know for sure he doesn't have a sense of humour.

PS: The review of the person claiming this book to be sexist and inappropriate is clearly from an individual who has had a sense of humour bypass.

You had to be there- if you weren't you missed a decade
Brill. A must for any one who lived in the ad world. I did and survived. thanks for the memoriesxxxx

Outdated and unfunny
I only bought this book on the recommendation of people who read the hilarious 'who moved my blackberry?'. They said it was the best one, the original! But I found it spectacularly unfunny, crass and vulgar, not a patch on Lucy Kellaway's book.

Ideally I think this book should be taken out of distribution as the actions and behaviour it condones are so old fashioned and inappropriate for 2007/08.

For a start almost every email is packed with obscene, sexist and sexual comments regarding work colleagues. The supposedly side splitting bits are when the email is sent to the wrong person! Ha ha ha - but they still keep doing it! Why? - any decent company would consider that Gross Misconduct and sackable, but oh no in this place the only people who get fired are those who do not uphold these inane principles and on the whim of a foul mouthed manager get fired with no competance hearing. This is so old hat that any business working like this would be up in front of an industrial tribunal several times a week.

This far removed from reality behaviour makes the whole plot incredible and therefore totally unfunny.

The book appears to have been written by a naive teenager with raging hormones who has drummed up bizarre fantasies of office life, ie business jaunts with topless models to Mauritious, exploding silicone implants and sex crazed secretaries with massive cleavages. It was therefore surprising to see the writer is a middle aged man - perhaps he has some growing up to do.

I am sorry but I found this book pathetic, the writer clearly has an unrealistic, outdated and sexist view of office/business life.