Like Jennifer Government—the book that launched Barry onto the world stage—Company is a sardonic look at the corporate world. Unlike Barry’s 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 takes a little of the gloss off 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 management-speak and corporate rationale, and with digs at The System always popular and a big name book already out there, he’ll have another hit.