REVIEW: Publishers Weekly

June 7, 1999

This review (which is written for booksellers) gives so much away about the plot that I can't bear to reprint the whole thing here. So I've snipped four sentences. I've only taken out the spoilers, not any damning comments, I promise.

Lampooning corporate "ethics," sexual politics and the marketing and film industries, this clever debut satire by 25-year-old Australian writer Barry will have readers nodding in agreement and quoting it to their friends. Ingenuous new marketing graduate Scat (he feels that his full name, Michael George Holloway, just won't do for a career in marketing) moves to L.A. hoping to become rich and famous. After he gets a million-dollar idea for a new cola product, cheeky and arrogant Scat approaches a beautiful, ruthless marketing manager named 6 at Coca-Cola. The product's name is, hilariously, a "dirty" word spelled unconventionally and in stylish font on a black can. [...] Scat and 6 have an affectionate, wary bond (even though Scat's crazy for her and she claims she's a lesbian), and together they nimbly dodge the clever, ever-surprising political land-mines that [a person] sets in their path. [...] By that point, readers will be rooting for him and will know much more about the politics of business, films, marketing and sex.