russell wiley is out to lunch

Russell Wiley a unicorn leader among the horses and other great office wisdoms.

I was quite surprised this summer when Richard Hine’s publication office contacted me and kindly asked if I would care to review his forthcoming book (released today, actually).  As Richard was a Twitter friend of mine (@RichardHine or on his novel’s Facebook page), I said, “Yes!” with a resounding yarwp.  As Richard’s publication office contacted me by E-mail, I suppose they did not hear my resounding yarwp but hopefully I used enough exclamation marks to make up for the lack of intonation.

Let’s stop bragging about the authors I ‘know’ via Twitter and start bragging about their guest posts at Britty Books (Richard Hine’s can be found here, too!).  Perhaps this is too egotistical as well?

Then, let’s just get to the…

Gist of the Story


Russell Wiley is the advertising manager for a medium-sized circulation newspaper in New York.  The problem is he’s on the print end of the newspaper in an online world.  There are some amazing insights about the death of print throughout the novel, especially by Wiley’s pseudonym, Christopher Finchley.  His alter-ego writes inspirational leadership material for a magazine.  He gathers ideas from his friend’s daughter.  Hence, Look at My Poopie!: Tracing the Origins of Workplace Competitiveness to Your Early Childhood Years and other ideas about unicorns and stand-out managing.

All the while, Wiley is trying to manage a dry spell in his marriage.  A dry spell for Russell Wiley equals a countdown of days without sex for the reader.  Warning to the faint of heart, some chapters can be quite explicit, proceed at your own risk.  Beyond this, Hine manages to capture the essence of long-term relationships, married or not.

Navigating the waters of his rocky home life, Wiley manages to get through most of the novel doing little to no work.  Office life, indeed!  The reader will recognize many types of office people from the intern with too many good ideas to the consultant of whom everyone is suspicious.  Add to that a hefty dose of project acronyms and the threat of job losses and you have one of the few modern novels that captures the heart of the workplace – for better and worse. (If you happen to be a fan of The Office TV series, you will indeed love this book.)

As his marriage and career rocket toward destruction, can Russell Wiley get motivated?  You may be surprised at this ending.  I was!

First Lines, Last Words

“I’m still asleep,” says Sam.

And this time they kiss.

Quotable

You can only be trapped by unreality.

Book Rating

book rating russell wiley

Overall rating 4.4/5

Beside the Bed 4.3 I’m proud to have a new author on my bedstand but I might get in trouble for some of the explicit language used from my elders.

Sleepless for the Story 4.4 Once I got into what Russell Wiley was trying to do (and get over what he wasn’t doing), it was hard to put down.

Regifting this Read 4.5 Definitely would give this to a friend, just so I can brag about ‘discovering’ this author myself.  Watch out for Richard Hine, there be talent here!

For more on my book rating system, have a look at the break-down.

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