As my recent post on "corportatizing" shows, I have issues about the corporate structure at the root of most American workplaces. I have to wonder if Michelle Miller has those same issues--and others--for never have I read a more enjoyable, or incisive dissection of this structure than "The Underwriting."
This is a criticism from within, and Miller knows all the types. But you want to know something, dolls? They exist in different forms in every other type of workplace--no matter how high or low end.
I had to wonder if Miller had an issue with straight men, because, so help me, there is not a likable one in the bunch. Their only interests seems to be--I kid you not--sports, money and sex. Now, who wants to hang out with a bunch like that? If you are a woman, then you are nothing more than something to be objectified; if you are gay, neither culture will understand the other, so what is the point?
It just goes to prove that when the bell rings each morning at Dow, the capitalist bastards come scurrying to their spots, like cockroaches scatter to the dark when a room lights up!
This is a first novel, and Miller runs the risk of being dangerously tedious, but having things simply bounce back and forth between the characters. What saves "The Underwriting" from banality is the incorporation of a skillfully worked out murder mystery that connects victims and characters in unique ways, coming, as they do, from opposite ends of the continent.
The book is not just nasty, it is a stinging indictment of what goes on every day in this city, with those glam people in power suits and outfits you wished you owned.
Except that the price of ownership is much too high!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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