You Look Nice Today

by Stanley Bing

Book Overview

Robert Harbert, better known as Harb, is Executive Vice President in Charge of Total Quality. CaroleAnne Winter is the assistant who runs his life. But even Harb can't ignore that CaroleAnne's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582342806
• ISBN13: 9781582342801
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA
• Length: 291 Pages
• Weight: 1.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Bing delivers.

As a fan of Sun Tzu Was a Sissy, What Would Machiavelli Do?, and Throwing the Elephant I couldn't pass up the opportunity to read Bing's novel. I couldn't put it down, witty and sarcastic the story had me turning each page eager for more. The novel is broken into three "books" introducing us to Robert "Harb" Harbert, his enigmatic assistant CaroleAnne, and narrator Fred Tell as well as other key players. What began as the best intentions spiral out of control as CarrolAnne devolves into a neurotic nightmare. Faced with heavy accusatuions Harb stands trial as everything he's known for so long begins to unravel. Some genuine laughs here, a great summer read by the pool.

The Office, with an infectious, funny but sad, bite...

A must for anyone who's ever worked in any kind of office at any time. Hilarious, literally lol funny... centers on a comic but horrible and all too plausible trial. "At this point the judge literally stood up on his dais-- which made him slightly shorter-- and screamed "I've had it with you, Buster!" This is the story of a corporate scandal, told by Tell, the head of human resources-- and naturally, the person who knows everyone in the company. But if you think this is a kind of Bill/Monica tale, think again. This book takes on a larger picture-- Harb, the Executive Vice President in charge of Total Quality, who is accused by his offbeat but incredibly efficient secretary CarolAnne, is a hapless Everyman. What this book is really about is not so much the manipulation of sex in the workplace, but about the way Work and the Office have become Life for so many of us. Harb's real tragedy is not so much his infatuation with CarolAnne which is more chivalrous than anything else, but his discovery of himself after years of distraction with empty pursuits, travel, material achievements, brought on only by this unjust persecution. It's not only his tragedy, but also the tragedy of his wife Jean, who realizes too late that she loves her husband as a person and not a role, Tell, Harb's friend who comes to see how the office cameraderie can never be the same, and for the reader who had been seduced into the "Lou Grant/Mary Tyler Moore" chumminess of the corporate world. The book stayed with me. The author doesn't fake either a happy or a tragic end but one that is ambiguous, leaving me to reflect on where happiness lies. This is a fascinating look at the dangers inherent in human communication, and in where we put our joys.

perfect

For me, YOU LOOK NICE TODAY was in the couldn't-put-it-down category. My husband felt the same way, so that makes 2. The Publisher's Weekly review does not describe our experience of the book. I don't think many people would call YOU LOOK NICE TODAY a legal thriller, and we certainly didn't find it slow going at any point. The book is a satire of corporate life, and is very, very funny at the start, then poignant and even painful toward the end. The plot has a twist neither of us saw coming. We expected a standard anti-P.C. trajectory, but that's not what the book turns out to be in the end. Or not entirely. YOU LOOK NICE TODAY reminds me a bit of the movie AMERICAN BEAUTY. The book has the same strong narrational presence & ironic tone as the film, and, as in the film, you discover only gradually that it is about more than 'the banality of suburban (or corporate or bourgeois) life.' Not to sound pretentious, YOU LOOK NICE TODAY is about life itself. Life and loss.

What fun!

I ripped through this book in two days! It was a funny spoof of office life, (particularly in a big corporation). The plot centers on a lawsuit charging sexual harrassment in the office. This allows a thoughtful look at how ordinary office interactions, the ones that allow us all to express a bit of personality, a little humanity, even within the confines of the corporate mold, may be twisted and misinterpreted to seem unfair and oppressive. The narrator is a sketch, a very funny "unreliable narrator" who tells us all we need to know without always realizing it. It is rare to find a book that captures the corporate ethos the way this one does -- the camaraderie, the understanding of rank, latitude in behavior depending on position, the helplessness of the senior managers without their support staff, the addiction to expense account living. The ending is bittersweet, the only ending possible. Don't miss this book!

Legal Thriller about Sexual Harassment is Biting

Stanley Bing delves into the world of coroporate paranoia and loneliness in this novel, told by the perspective of world-weary Fred Tell, who explains in pungent, fast-paced, insightful prose how his business friend Robert Harbert must suffer all sorts of bizzare accusations from his one-time friend and assistant CaroleAnne Winter, a scandalously-dressed woman who becomes convinced that the office, headed by Herbert, is out to get her. The trial, based on CaroleAnne's bogus lawsuit of sexual harassment, examines a major theme in the novel, namely America's inability, through its often bovine-minded populace, to discern between rational and cheap argumentation. Fred Tell suffers from a viable fear that the jury is too uneducated and brainwashed by unexamined emotionalism used by CaroleAnne's attorney to see through her paranoid delusions. I'll let you read the book's conclusion to see what the jury decides.The themes of corporate loneliness, suffocating paranoia, and insanity, rendered so well in this book are also done well in two companion novels, Moral Hazard by Kate Jennings, and The Ignored (a horror novel, if you can believe it) by Bentley Little.