E Squared: Edgy, Entertaining & Epistolary!
E Vestigio dropped in a fortnight ago to keep me company, to gup a bit and to cheer me up. She brought with her two books, my belated birthday gifts. Book recommendations from E are always interesting, given her diverse reading habits. Her gifts were ‘The Interpretation Of Murder‘ by Jed Rubenfeld and ‘E Squared‘ by Matt Beaumont. I didn’t like the first one very much so I’m not going to talk any further about it. But I was intrigued by the cover and the blurb of E Squared so that’s the one I got to first.
E says this book is a sequel to E 🙂 but I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Wikipedia tells me that this is considered an example of an epistolary novel which I gather, refers to the fact that the story is told through a series of digital correspondences (email, blogposts, text messages, chats).
Bitching about the boss, trying to hook up with the office hottie, watercooler gossip, mad clients, madder colleagues and the maddest workplace of them all – E Squared pulls you into the surreal corporate soap opera of life at ad agency Meerkat360.
The entire novel is in the form of blog posts, chats, text messages and emails. Surprisingly, the novel format doesn’t hurt the reader at all and within minutes you are drawn into the lives of the Meerkat360 staff (and some others). Anyone who has ever worked for an agency, been bullied by a boss (or a junior), juggled a weekend marriage with a demanding career or simply lagged behind their peers in the rat race, E Squared will feel familiar.
It’s probably telling that the stories of our lives, in the future will be documented in digital mediabytes. It’s a regular Dilbert meets 2 and a 1/2 Men.
E Squared kept me in splits for the entire week that my own E wasn’t around so I give it three cheers… Eep, Eep, Ooray!
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A version is posted to Yahoo! Real Beauty.
