What do you think?
Rate this book
Good Company
Love and ambition take Martin into the world of business. But good company can quickly sour, and lovers can betray or be betrayed. As the glitter fades and ambition fails, Martin confronts destruction, disillusion and death before making the discovery that reveals a shocking truth.
303 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2013
12 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 24, 2014
It is a twenty-first century “Man in the Grey Flannel Suit”: a novel about the business world. Fittingly the business here is Software.
Martin, a young school teacher in a school in the north of England, feels he needs to widen his horizons and moves to London to work for a Software company in the Marketing department. It’s a world that he realises he knows very little about. He will however quickly grow up.
He meets a number of interesting characters, not all of them totally admirable, nor totally reprehensible. In other world, a perfect microcosm of the real world outside, although the reader will sometimes feel he/she is witnessing life on another planet.
David Beeson is obviously writing as an insider. He is full of insight into business politics. He understands the mindset of the practitioners of that particular witchcraft. He describes them with great accuracy and insight. One colleague is described as having all the malice of an Iago without any of the cunning.
The company produces and sells Software to the industry, often governmental or local government agencies. Although Martin himself, working in Marketing, seems to be on a fixed salary, his colleagues in Sales have to have recourse to all manner of skulduggery to earn commission. Martin witnesses the rat race and records it with great humour and aplomb if not quite detachment. He will discover that sincerity is a lot easier to fake when it is not all artificial. When he comments on the glibness of a pep talk, he is reminded that the speaker was not under oath as he was delivering his message. When two aristocratic trouble shooters arrive to sort out the mess the company is in, Martin, struck by their similarity observes that they were as difficult to tell apart as two murderers in a Shakespearean tragedy. Beeson writes with clarity and insight: at a low point in Martin’s life, he notices a Muslim couple on a bench sitting with a gap between them, but notices that their knees were just touching. The hero feels moved, as indeed would the reader be.
Office politics aside there are romantic intrigues. Unsurprisingly Martin discovers who is humping who, and inevitably becomes himself the object of desire of an older colleague.
The central theme of the novel is the tussle between Colin and Jim, both capable individuals with distinctive methods to reach the same aim. One is constantly undermining the other. The younger Martin is often a pawn between the two men. This rivalry ends badly for both of them.
The author provides a very lucid and credible account of life inside a big corporation.One death coming soon after another does not strike one as incredible. Seemingly they are due to road accidents, but are they? Would Martin himself become a possible murder suspect?
Beeson’s style is pleasant and easy to read. He has the insider’s ear for the office jargon and metaphors, and this, with his own bantering style makes it a thoroughly absorbing novel.
But be warned. An airport blockbuster this ain’t. To derive the full benefit of this novel the reader will need to invest. The uninformed reader (like me) would need to pay special attention to the early chapters if they are not to lose track of the many strands available and understand the nuts and bolts of the business world enough to follow the development of the tale.
Martin, a young school teacher in a school in the north of England, feels he needs to widen his horizons and moves to London to work for a Software company in the Marketing department. It’s a world that he realises he knows very little about. He will however quickly grow up.
He meets a number of interesting characters, not all of them totally admirable, nor totally reprehensible. In other world, a perfect microcosm of the real world outside, although the reader will sometimes feel he/she is witnessing life on another planet.
David Beeson is obviously writing as an insider. He is full of insight into business politics. He understands the mindset of the practitioners of that particular witchcraft. He describes them with great accuracy and insight. One colleague is described as having all the malice of an Iago without any of the cunning.
The company produces and sells Software to the industry, often governmental or local government agencies. Although Martin himself, working in Marketing, seems to be on a fixed salary, his colleagues in Sales have to have recourse to all manner of skulduggery to earn commission. Martin witnesses the rat race and records it with great humour and aplomb if not quite detachment. He will discover that sincerity is a lot easier to fake when it is not all artificial. When he comments on the glibness of a pep talk, he is reminded that the speaker was not under oath as he was delivering his message. When two aristocratic trouble shooters arrive to sort out the mess the company is in, Martin, struck by their similarity observes that they were as difficult to tell apart as two murderers in a Shakespearean tragedy. Beeson writes with clarity and insight: at a low point in Martin’s life, he notices a Muslim couple on a bench sitting with a gap between them, but notices that their knees were just touching. The hero feels moved, as indeed would the reader be.
Office politics aside there are romantic intrigues. Unsurprisingly Martin discovers who is humping who, and inevitably becomes himself the object of desire of an older colleague.
The central theme of the novel is the tussle between Colin and Jim, both capable individuals with distinctive methods to reach the same aim. One is constantly undermining the other. The younger Martin is often a pawn between the two men. This rivalry ends badly for both of them.
The author provides a very lucid and credible account of life inside a big corporation.One death coming soon after another does not strike one as incredible. Seemingly they are due to road accidents, but are they? Would Martin himself become a possible murder suspect?
Beeson’s style is pleasant and easy to read. He has the insider’s ear for the office jargon and metaphors, and this, with his own bantering style makes it a thoroughly absorbing novel.
But be warned. An airport blockbuster this ain’t. To derive the full benefit of this novel the reader will need to invest. The uninformed reader (like me) would need to pay special attention to the early chapters if they are not to lose track of the many strands available and understand the nuts and bolts of the business world enough to follow the development of the tale.
January 9, 2015
It's always exciting discovering a work by a new author especially when it is one that is this good. 'Good Company' is a page turning expose of the murky world of office politics.
August 12, 2015
I took this book with me on summer holiday in Croatia... and I did not put it down, until I was finished!
I wasn't sure what to expect but this book did not disappoint. There are enough twists and turns to keep an avid reader enthralled.
I wasn't sure what to expect but this book did not disappoint. There are enough twists and turns to keep an avid reader enthralled.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews