Customer Reviews

Lloyd--What Happened: A Novel of Business

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Stanely Bing's "Lloyd, What Happened" starts with a great satirical send-up on corporate life, complete with accompanying PowerPoint slides. But once Lloyd and his wife start having affairs about half-way through, the book loses its energy and its heart, and careens towards a rather unbelievable, slightly unsatisfying ending.

But this book is worth reading for the delicious parodies and witty comments on the state of American and International business as the reader follows the exploits of Lloyd, middle-manager extradonaire, has he attempts to complete the Big Deal, that would cost thousands their jobs and Lloyd his soul (he thinks). The book is presented as a journal, detailing one-year of Lloyd's life, and while Lloyd's business dealings with a variety of people and cultures are laugh-out loud funny, the interpersonal (business-speak) relationships Lloyd has with his family and his girlfriend, fall rather flat.

However, if you are looking a highly comic read on all aspects of business then "Lloyd, What Happened" is for you. Its a quick 400 page read, since many pages are devoted to hilarious Powerpoint Graphs detailing Lloyd's life. Overall, this book is worth reading.

Wonderful novel. Bing really captures the idea of corporate life (business friendships, appearing productive, meetings). It is dead on. The strange part of the book is that it is littered with these PowerPoint-esque charts and graphs that pertain (sometimes only tangentially) to the plot line. I have never seen anything like it before. It is marred however by a week and contrived ending (almost like he had to hurry up and get it to his publisher or something).

Bing was frequently dead-on funny in his insights into the mind of Lloyd, a prototype rising corporate executive. Bing was masterful in his ability to wring great humor out of Lloyd's mundane day-to-day corporate life. The Powerpoint charts sprinkled throughout were a great touch. The book is not without its dark side, however, as it presented the moral compromises that Lloyd was faced with. Although the book's structure was more of a journal than a plot driven form, I couldn't wait to see what Lloyd would do or think next. My only complaint was that the disciplined satirical tone of the book lapsed into a grossly exaggerated ending. Without giving anything away, the ending parodied corporate leadership in a "Wonka-esque" manner, including a non-linear elevator.

A brilliant book taken down a peg by the weak ending. Funny but painful

Mick Jagger once said that the hardest part of writing a rock & roll song was ending it. That's why many just fade out. Pity Bing couldn't just have faded out this otherwise delightful tale of corporate America - a sort of "Babbitt" of the late 20th century. The ending is horribly contrived and mars the work. Stop at the last chapter but one, and this book deserves the full five stars.

This is a very funny comic book of a novel, complete with hysterical charts and graphs of the characters high and low points. Many details of business meeting are bound to strike chords with those us who walk those corridors. But the whole book is set around one huge deal, and the author takes the easy way out and never gives us any idea what the deal it, or what the business issues actually are. That would be like setting Catch-22 in an unnamed war for an unmamed country. The result is that the book looses much potential verisimilitude, and becomes nothing more than a clever comic book. But a very clever one, so read, enjoy, just don't expect too much.

I just graduated from college and wanted some summer reading before I begin work on Wall Street. I was looking for a novel that was business centered, creative, witty, funny, and suspensful and this book delivered all of these qualities. I highly recommend this book to anyone, I found myself unable to put "Lloyd" down for a moment. I can't wait to read the next book that "Stanley Bing" writes.

One of the funniest and most accurate accounts of the banality of executive life. The book begins in an executive retreat in Pittsburgh and ends in the a top-floor penthouse in NY. In one fell swoop, a small team of backbiters constructs and deconstructs "the deal of the century."

The charts and illustrations were a riot but I just couldn't really get into the book, it was very hard to like the characters. If you enjoy Bing I strongly recomend "You Look Nice Today."

I wish there were more books as funny as this one. I can still quote a few passages from it, and it has been a few years since i last read it. Especially if you've been involved in any large corporation, you will especially appreciate the absurdities, but it's just an incredibly funny book. I used to read Stanly Bing in Esquire and I just love his writing. I wish there were more like this!!