Review: Company by Max Barry

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Max Barry’s Company is his third novel, and it’s one that helps position him as one of the more prominent Australian satirists working today. Barry is known for his previous books Syrup and Jennifer Government, both touching on themes of consumerism and corporate greed, and Company continues in this vein.

The context of Company should be instantly recognisable to virtually anyone who’s ever, well, been employed. Barry’s insider research was apparently conducted whilst working at global computer company Hewlett Packard, while my own painful and extended brushes with bureaucracy were courtesy of a global publishing company that will remain nameless. The book is absurd, of course, and it relishes in its over-the-top depiction of company culture, but perhaps the most disturbing thing about it is that it’s so easily recognisable. The drawn-out battles and line-drawing over a missing doughnut, whose numbers are carefully rationed by catering; the rabid attention to which coat hook or car parking space belongs to whom purely out of convention and I-was-there-firstness; the complete bewilderment of the employees when asked to explain exactly what their role is without relying on a tautology or circular logic; the ‘just because’ acceptance of bizarre and ever-changing policies from above. I’ve been there. We all have.

Company follows the stellar rise of new graduate Jones, Zephyr Inc’s newest staff member. Jones is not especially slow off the mark, and it doesn’t take him long to realise that things at Zephyr are atypical even for a large business. The always-absent receptionist drives a sports car that seems well beyond her salary range; the lift buttons are numbered in reverse order to encourage staff to aspire towards a position on level 1; and due to some creative accounting, Jones’s salary has been written off as a stationery purchase. However, unlike most employees at Zephyr (as well as those in the real world), rather than accepting the status quo, Jones is determined to find out exactly what’s going on at the company, and while he’s at it, find out exactly what it is that the company does.

Barry is most at home when he’s digging his claws into corporate life and sending up much-ridiculed IT and HR personnel, and readers will find that it’s these areas of the book that are strongest. Characterisation is generally pretty weak, with most characters existing largely to be tormented and mocked, and even main character Jones being fairly flat and having, it should be said, a fairly easy time of it in terms of the plot challenges thrown at him. However, if you can forgive this, and the somewhat weak conclusion to the book, you’ll find that there’s much in Company to love—or at least with which you can identify. I’m tempted to leave a copy at reception, myself!