In Office Hours

I loved this book. Everything about it: cover to ending. I started reading it yesterday, put it down to go to bed last night and got up twice during the night to keep reading. At times it had a "Working Girl" feel about it, maybe the environment of office politics and secret affairs. At one point I thought the ending might be predictable, but I was happily surprised to see that it wasn't. I highly recommend it!

What to say… what to say. How unique or creative can a story about office liaisons get? When lead characters have names like Bella and Stella, I tend to expect some form of chick lit read so I was kind of hoping for a light-hearted “comedy of errors” kind of story. While there are some comic moments, Kellaway uses this story more as a vehicle to poke at things like corporate hypocrisy, gender roles and positions of authority. While the author could have chosen any industry as the backdrop for the passion shenanigans, she chose “big oil”, probably because advertising and fashion have already been done to death. The big oil setting also lets Kellaway incorporate all the traditional devices – power suits, power meetings, multi-layer corporate hierarchy, high flying business travel – and even plays with the known market volatility for some distraction from the rather tedious “why am I still in this relationship” bemoaning that goes on, and on, and on. It is the continual whining and, as one reviewer has pointed out, the representation that, unlike men, women seem unable to focus on their work while involved in an illicit affair. That made this a rather irksome read for me.

Overall, an okay read if you like stories set in an office environment, and probably best read as a parable.

Stella is in her mid-forties, happily married with two children, and seriously successful at work. She is the only female executive at AE, a big oil company. Bella is in her late twenties/early thirties, a single mom, and works as a personal assistant (also at AE). Bella's boss, Julia, is fired because she had an affair with another man at the company. The story is told alternatively from both of their perspectives. The similarity in their names seems unnecessary in the context and leads largely to confusion; it's not like the parallels between their lives would have been difficult to see without this connection.

I expected this to be a chick lit novel about office romance. Although chick lit has not been my genre of choice for a number of years, a good one here and there can be quite enjoyable. Office romances are a bad idea in general, but it's not like they don't happen. Still, this could have been a different book.

This novel seems to suggest three things.

1. Adultery happens. A lot. At least, if you're high-powered in a company.
2. Age gaps are hot. Successful women will date younger men and successful men will date younger women.
3. Women cannot focus on work in the midst of an affair, but men can.

The last of the three is the one that really pisses me off. During Stella's affair with her subordinate, he still manages to get his job done, but she mentions many times how little she cares about work compared to her trysts. She constantly skives off work for a rendezvous and is extremely non-productive. Despite that, she gets promoted and receives accolades for her excellent performance. Is this because even when half-mad with obsession she does amazing work or because the standards for female employees are lower and no one notices? Meanwhile, Bella seems to do very little, as her position was created so she can stay in the department with her cheating boss. She constantly invents reasons to go to his office and sends whiny text messages wondering why he is cold to her at the office.

Bella and Stella both obsess about their men constantly. The men certainly seem interested too, but are they really agonizing over whether a text message ends with an x? I just could not deal with how childish and absurd all of the people in this book were.

Conundrums of of falling in love at work, the Blackberry edition. Very much of its time and place. I am reminded of a comment by a lawyer giving a workshop on harrassment - affairs happen at work and if it ends in marriage there are no lawsuits. Off to a slow start but picks up the pace and is well written.

This is a book I would never have chosen for myself. However it was selected in a book club I am in. I actually chose this book out of all the book choices we were given because it looked like it was going to be a very funny light hearted read.

The book is about office affairs. It centres on Bella Chambers a young PA who has an affair with James one of the bigwigs in the company and Stella Bradberry a very professionally together lady who also has a top ranking job in the company - who has a passionate affair with Rhys a trainee.

The two separate affairs happen within the same company and I liked the comparison of opposites where you have young Bella who has an affair with an older man and Rhys the young man having an affair with the older lady.

I found that Bella and Rhys had a great deal in common with their feelings for their boss's. I found both Stella and James rather weak character's in that they are both quite needy.

I found the description of all of the character's except Bella repulsed me and got me thinking is it really worth it in the end to have an affair. Would the lady's have normally gone for such toads - I don't think so. I think it is the drama of the chase and being caught that is the appeal.

The book did not give me as many laughs as I wanted out of this book but gave a sharp insight into what can happen in an office affair. It left me feeling cold and a little flat when I finished this book as I think I just wanted the happy ever after ending but this book does not give that. However it works as I think this was trying to portray that feeling of emptyness like you could imagine when an affair has ended and your heart is broken.

I really wanted the lady's to be winners but sadly it just was not the case.

I don't think I would read this type of book again, that's not to say it was a bad book but just not my thing. I was frustrated with the subject to begin with and it just clarified my feelings on affairs in general.

I've been working a total of three years now, and it's still very funny to me when the topic of workplace romance is broached during lunch hour. I've seen a few of my co-workers being romanced by their supervisors, managers, and what-not, but I have not given it much thought because they still maintain a professional attitude at work. I myself never explored such territory as I preferred having a boyfriend outside of my work environment. I am terribly easy to distract, and thinking about a boyfriend - who is somewhere around the vicinity also working - in the midst of doing an enema to a geria patient, I'm afraid I would have lost my license very early on in my career. So when I read the synopsis for In Office Hours, I was mainly intrigued to see how it goes wrong, seeing as how I can only see when it goes right: One of my colleagues just married her supervisor, but she's resigning and would be busy making a home for him. Clearly, where I work, workplace romance is the last thing to worry about as it's always conducted decently and discreetly, so I wanted to explore a situation where it could ugly and distasteful.

The story revolves around two very capable and intelligent career women: Stella is one of the more senior executives in Atlantic Energy and her career could go nowhere but up. She's married to a previously successful film maker and has two children. Bella, on the other hand, is PA to Stella's colleague. She is a single mother in constant guard from her irresponsible and dangerous ex-boyfriend who keeps forcing to see their daughter. When her boss resigns, she is transferred to another senior executive and embarks on a clandestine relationship with him. Stella is assigned to handle two management trainees - one intelligent but bland female, and one insolent but very perceptive and talented male - and after being relentlessly pursued, begins an affair with her male trainee.

In Office Hours was supposed to showcase the emotional and professional dangers of illicit relationships with your co-workers - specifically your boss or your subordinate. It was meant to narrate two affairs with parallel beginnings, circumstances, and consequences. It was expected to reveal the exciting and dreadful risk of starting affairs in the office setting, while conducting business on the side. Yes, business on the side, because as exhibited in this book, the relationship takes centerstage and the business just playing second fiddle, if not completely ignored.

This book showed that, but sadly, nothing more.

I rarely drop something I do without finishing it. But I almost did not finish this book not because it was horrible or offensive but because even early on in the first few chapters, this book became a drag and if I could just skim through the rest and get to the ending already, I would have done so. But I almost never 'not finish' books because I felt as if I was doing the author a disservice. They wrote a book to be read. Maybe not from start to finish, but if you do not finish a book, what's the point then of a writer writing an ending? So I plodded onto the story even if it was really getting boring and repetitive already. While reading, I was trying to think which parts made me think that it was getting uninteresting, but I really could not point out something specific. The characters, while sometimes feeling like mere stereotypes, can actually make me feel some sympathy. The narration, alternating between Bella and Stella's points of view, is sometimes confusing but altogether consistent and solid.

Altogether, the plot, the characters, the idea of a book about illicit liaisons in the workplace is a unique, if not remarkable, but the way it was executed was only mildly interesting. Or maybe I am the wrong person for this book, as reading the reviews, it seems like a lot of people really liked the story. Again, it may just be a question of me not having the enough number of brain cells required for such reading, or maybe the book itself clearly has its shortcomings. But whatever the answer may be, In Office Hours is a good read for passing the time, while waiting for that email from that guy from the other department, or while counting down the hours before you meet your boss in some clandestine location to conduct some 'unbusinesslike' business.


-----

I received this book free of charge from the publisher, Hachette Book Group through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest and truthful review. This, in no way, affected my opinion or review of this book.