it's becoming increasingly difficult to figure out whether stories come from The Onion or CNN.com. This story says that it's about the creator of American Girl dolls descending into eccentric madness while restoring a historic village to its former glory.

Can YOU tell?

I got turned on to Max Berry's writing when I spotted his second book, Jennifer Government, and fell in love. It's a post-ethics tale of corporate natural selection out of control. Nike hires gang-bangers to shoot kids for shoes (it creates buzz!) and Reebok shelling Nike headquarters in retaliation. Most of Berry's books revolve around that sort of zany satirization of corporate America. It had a lot of the conceptual marks of cyberpunk, but steered clear of that genre's tech obsession and focused on the human elements of the story. It was witty and scathing and well-paced and good.

Company treads through a lot of the same territory (corporate greed, ethics-free living, bewildered company peons caught in a Management plot beyond their comprehension or control). Its flavor is less "post-apocolyptic marketing" and more "management book from hell." An innocent fresh-out from grad school -- Jones -- has been hired by Zephyr Holdings, an impressive conglomerate with an impressive mission statement and an impressive blonde receptionist. A few days into his new job, though, he's neck-deep in meaningless office squbbles and petty donut-related power struggles. Worse, he still can't figure out what the company does.

The book's first act is full of surreal Mister Smith Goes To Washington moments, with the naive new-hire doing perfctly reasonable things in an utterly unreasonable setting. With every instance of insane managerial incompetence, Jones' stress levels build.. In a fit of rage, he snaps and fights his way to The Man Behind The Curtain: Zephyr's enigmatic and unseen CEO.

All of Max Berry's books explore the same corporate landscape, and it can feel a bit repetitive at times. Each of his three books feels a bit like variations on a theme, but he's witty and catty enough to pull it off. Senior Management is clueless and dithering, but the Management Gurus who dispense wisdom from on high are the real Nazis in Barry's world. The nonstop dehumanizing of Zephyr employees is over-the-top satire, but it's clear he believes that it all be reality if the Gurus and Consultants of the world were given free reign.

There's a love (?) story, as usual for him, but it has a couple of twists I didn't expect from him, and that gets bonus points. Jennifer Government still feels like the best of his books, probably because I'm partial to cyberpunk, but Company feels more focused on its target.