Like Jennifer Government — the book that launched Barry onto the world stage — Company is a sardonic look of the corporate world. Unlike his previous effort, it’s not a story overlaid against the backdrop of capitalism gone mad. This time capitalism gone mad is front and centre and so has little of Jennifer Government’s world-weary self-knowledge, When the big reveal comes barely a third into the story, it take a little of the gloss of Barry’s keen sense of the absurd, and you wonder where Company can go. But it’s less a straight narrative than a soliloquy to life under the yoke of big business, depicting a fictitious corporation where taking a colleague’s doughnut can be a firing offence and cost cutting is a religion. When nothing is what it seems in the endless and senseless edicts from on high, new employee Jones starts asking uncomfortable questions, plunging himself into a world of corporate espionage. Where Company shines is in Barry’s eye for the inane strictures of corporate life. He perfectly captures the zeitgeist of managementspeak and corporate rationale, and with digs at The System always popular and a big name book already out there, he’ll have another hit.