You Look Nice Today : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: perfect
Review: For me, YOU LOOK NICE TODAY was in the couldn't-put-it-down category. My husband felt the same way, so that makes 2.

The Publisher's Weekly review does not describe our experience of the book. I don't think many people would call YOU LOOK NICE TODAY a legal thriller, and we certainly didn't find it slow going at any point.

The book is a satire of corporate life, and is very, very funny at the start, then poignant and even painful toward the end. The plot has a twist neither of us saw coming. We expected a standard anti-P.C. trajectory, but that's not what the book turns out to be in the end. Or not entirely.

YOU LOOK NICE TODAY reminds me a bit of the movie AMERICAN BEAUTY. The book has the same strong narrational presence & ironic tone as the film, and, as in the film, you discover only gradually that it is about more than 'the banality of suburban (or corporate or bourgeois) life.'

Not to sound pretentious, YOU LOOK NICE TODAY is about life itself. Life and loss.

Rating:
Summary: What fun!
Review: I ripped through this book in two days! It was a funny spoof of office life, (particularly in a big corporation). The plot centers on a lawsuit charging sexual harrassment in the office. This allows a thoughtful look at how ordinary office interactions, the ones that allow us all to express a bit of personality, a little humanity, even within the confines of the corporate mold, may be twisted and misinterpreted to seem unfair and oppressive.
The narrator is a sketch, a very funny "unreliable narrator" who tells us all we need to know without always realizing it. It is rare to find a book that captures the corporate ethos the way this one does -- the camaraderie, the understanding of rank, latitude in behavior depending on position, the helplessness of the senior managers without their support staff, the addiction to expense account living.
The ending is bittersweet, the only ending possible. Don't miss this book!

Rating:
Summary: Funny and Insightful
Review: I've always enjoyed Gil's, that is, Stanley's, business column writing as funny yet insightful. In this novel, his second, he somehow achieves the same result. Both the corporate and human dynamics are well done, well written, and interesting. His insights on the loneliness of achievement in higher corporate life are illuminating and touching. Maybe those fat cats aren't so fat after all.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Disclosure without the tech, tension or sex
Review: Michael Crichton gave sexual harassment a bad name when a power-hungry, highly sexual female practices reverse sexual discrimination and now Stanley Bing again puts the idea of sexual harassment charges brought by a woman in bad light, only this time the wrongfully accusing woman is sexy, demure, unassuming, competent, and driven by religion, not sex.

Robert ("Harb") Harbert is the victim in this story yet he is more foolish than innocent. His Boswell is Fred Tell, the VP of Human Resources, who ought to know better. Tell offers his view as a seemingly disinterested observer, only to become uninterested about the time the book becomes uninteresting. Tell presents the first third of the book as history and background. For example, a boss says "take out this trash" and CarolAnne thinks it is aimed at her personally. Harb, hearing heavy pounding outside his office, asks her what she is killing, and she claims he's accusing her of having an abortion. You get the picture. The multimillion dollar lawsuit and trial follow and then a relatively brief conclusion. Tell describes the accuser, CarolAnne (one word, capital 'A') in physical terms while he also praises her incredible work talents. She has excellent work skills, is apparently very overqualified, but she has a load of personal and work history baggage that even a naïve HR assistant would not fail to question. But first Harb, and then others, are smitten by her combination of knockout skills and miraculous work output, and the rest, as they say, is history. The biggest problem seems to be that his firm hired in haste and then repented at their leisure. And boy, are they leisurely. At times, the firm's management makes Richard Grasso's directors look like a bunch of Ebenezer Scrooges. Salaries are astronomical, raises are rapid, and expense accounts, well let's just say that Harb casually assumes his $15k a month expense account habit will be supported for most of his first year following his termination. And Bing makes the corporate quality movement something trivial and a passing fad, an apparent demotion for Harb to get the head job and an office quickly closed when times go bad. So much for corporate quality.

The best insight here comes from the judge at the trial. Unfortunately, he has about ten lines throughout the book, including transcripts from the trial that are intermingled with the narration. There is little need to describe the moronic behavior of the opposing lawyers or the outcome of the trial. There is humor in some of the characters and their actions and some insight into corporate life. Even the loser at the trial seems happy. By the end, the only victim in this book is perhaps the reader.

Rating:
Summary: Legal Thriller about Sexual Harassment is Biting
Review: Stanley Bing delves into the world of coroporate paranoia and loneliness in this novel, told by the perspective of world-weary Fred Tell, who explains in pungent, fast-paced, insightful prose how his business friend Robert Harbert must suffer all sorts of bizzare accusations from his one-time friend and assistant CaroleAnne Winter, a scandalously-dressed woman who becomes convinced that the office, headed by Herbert, is out to get her. The trial, based on CaroleAnne's bogus lawsuit of sexual harassment, examines a major theme in the novel, namely America's inability, through its often bovine-minded populace, to discern between rational and cheap argumentation. Fred Tell suffers from a viable fear that the jury is too uneducated and brainwashed by unexamined emotionalism used by CaroleAnne's attorney to see through her paranoid delusions. I'll let you read the book's conclusion to see what the jury decides.

The themes of corporate loneliness, suffocating paranoia, and insanity, rendered so well in this book are also done well in two companion novels, Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings, and The Ignored (a horror novel, if you can believe it) by Bentley Little.

Rating:
Summary: Many faceted
Review: This is one book that will genuinely affect different readers
many different ways. Although mainly told from the perspective
of a narrator who is a friend of all concerned and is the head
of corporate HR, many readers will identify with different
players in this drama. Plus, the corporation that employs all
these people is part of the problem and possible solutions.
Throughout the personal drama involved, and the tragedy that is
played out on several levels, the corporation seems to have the
most impact on the greatest number of lives, even though corporations are supposed to have no souls and therefore, no
personal feelings.
The head of a special "quality" division is on the rise, as is
his division during the days of corporate growth and profit,
and when a lovely temp solves her first big problem in such an
easy, smooth way, she is promptly hired as an assistant to that
head. Everyone in the division seems to like the woman, and
she is helpful and hard-working, but her personal life intrudes
into her business life, as it often does; in her case, that personal life is a hard one, and she shows up at work having
obviously been beaten by a thug of a husband. Everyone feels
sorry for her, and they all try to help her through that trauma.
She gets promotions a little too early, and she gets nice cash
bonuses ahead of time, and she grows in importance as so many
people lavish extra attention and graditude on her. She advances in the corporation beyond her experience or education,
and no one seems to mind because she is so dedicated to the company and its profits.
But about the same time the company begins to stagnate economically, the woman starts to act in an odd manner, and
she begins to criticize, and even attack, beyond reason, and
everyone notices, but, in true corporation fashion, no one tries
to get a grip on the situation. As the woman begins to deteriorate emotionally, and perhaps mentally, everyone begins

to fear her, and she is allowed to continue on her destructive
way.
Then, when the proper leaders of her division see she should not
be allowed to continue in her job, everyone begins to get afraid
of a possible law suit, so, again, they do nothing while the
bad situation escalates into a worse situation.
The co. even tries to promote her in order to get her into a
different division, with less stress, where she might settle
down into normal corporate behavior. But she refuses the promotion, and she insists her place is right where she is.
Then, as the division is beginning to dry up and shrink, for
all the business reasons, the woman assistant offers to resign,
but, again, for reasons improperly altruistic, her resignation
is refused, so the company loses its last chance to get her out
of their collective hair.
She repays all the promotions, bonuses, personal help and easy
path to corporate success by then quitting and suing the company. As the saying goes, "no good dead goes unpunished."
Throughout the string of personal problems, and then the corporate legal manuevering, the one who suffers the most is the
one guy who truly worried about her, and cared about her as a human being, without asking anything in return. Because he has
cared so much, and tried so hard to do good, he is the one most
damaged by the accusations. Then, as further reward, the corporation begins to doubt his worth to the company, and they
begin squeezing him out, probably hoping somehow that will defuse the lawsuit.
The story is complex, and it shows how many people suffer, and
to what depth that suffering can go, when one person is allowed
to poison the corporate atmosphere that is nurturing so many
people. Because of the one woman's obsessions and mental deterioration, which the company did nothing to check, careers
and even lives are permanently damaged, and even personal lives
are broken.
The results seem hard to believe, but to anyone who has tried
to survive corporate life, and become a productive part of it,
the story will ring too, too true. Hard work is ignored, good
people are destroyed, the best of intentions are undermined,
and the corporation goes on, usually run by the least-sensitive,
unimagative, single-minded, greed-driven people possible.
This story shows too well, and in a very complex, emotional way,
what can happen to people who care too much.
As said above, different people will react in different ways to
the story, but it is a good, solid story well worth reading.
Whether read from the view of an individual striving to succeed,
or from the corporate side only worried about profit, there is
much to be learned here.
A good, emotionally-charged, entertaining read.