Popco [Hardcover]

Scarlett Thomas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2, 2004

A gripping novel about branding, code breaking, marketing jargon and toys from the acclaimed young writer, Scarlett Thomas Everyone loves working at PopCo. It's a very young, very cool company with no dress code, no rules and no set working hours. If you work at PopCo you're just as likely to pull all-nighters making prototypes, as you are to suddenly decamp en masse to Prague for a week of trend-spotting or fact finding. It's that sort of place. Alice is the exception. She likes working for PopCo, but she doesn't love it. She's good at her job though. She's inherited a love of puzzles from her grandfather who was a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the war, and is quietly becoming the star of PopCo's 'Ideation' team. Now Alice has been called down to a mysterious 'thought camp' in Devon with the rest of the team. They're brainstorming over the toy market for teenage girls. Boys have plenty of crazes from Pokemon cards to videogames, but no one has come up with a killer brand for teenage girls. PopCo want to be first and Alice thinks she's cracked it, but suddenly she's not that sure she wants to unleash it on the world. Could it have another application? And how sinister is marketing to children anyway? PopCo is a compelling story of rivalry, secrecy, big business and branding.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The code-breaking and -making heroine of Thomas's latest smart, engaging novel (after Going Out) takes a critical view of the corporate marketing of cool, an exploit she knows from inside the rapaciously hip boardrooms of the titular British toy company, the third largest in the world. Twenty-nine-year-old Alice Butler has parlayed her expertise in "crosswords, cryptography, and cryptanalysis";talents she gained from her mathematically inclined grandparents;into a job at PopCo's Ideation and Design department, where she creates sleuthing kits for kids (KidSpy, KidTec and KidCracker). At a companywide countryside retreat (aka "Thought Camp"), the CEO selects Alice to help invent a product that will spark a craze for teenage girls. While Alice looks into her past for insight to this inadequately tapped market;and for clues to her own identity;she also ponders a locket from her grandfather that may contain the code to a centuries-old puzzle. As Alice works on PopCo's blockbuster product and decodes the ancient brainteaser, as well as encrypted messages from an anonymous PopCo colleague, she becomes increasingly disenchanted with her employer's ubiquitous branding, advertising and exploitation of young consumers. Thomas delivers a captivating heroine and a pointed cultural critique that will especially resonate with the No Logo crowd. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Mathematical puzzles. Mind-bending codes. A secret manuscript. And a cake recipe, too. Thomas' latest (after 2004's Going Out) has a chronic case of attention deficit disorder. As the novel opens, Brit Alice Butler is en route to a retreat sponsored by her employer, PopCo, a cutting-edge--and slightly creepy--toy company. (Alice takes the midnight train to avoid colleagues--and human contact in general--an early indication that she is a little off-kilter.) It's no wonder Alice considers herself an outsider; her father disappeared when she was nine, leaving her in the care of her grandparents, two quirky cryptanalysts privy to the whereabouts of a centuries-old buried treasure. Meanwhile, at the company conference, Alice and her colleagues are charged with developing the ultimate product for the teen-girl market. Alice is soon distracted from the task by mysterious encoded messages slipped under her door. Will deciphering them shape her future, or perhaps shed light on the past? Although Thomas' premise is clever, her digressions into esoteric topics (Godel, anyone?) are likely to leave readers more exhausted than amused. Allison Block
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Fourth Estate Paperbacks (August 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841157635
• ISBN-13: 978-1841157634
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,543,645 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scarlett Thomas was born in London in 1972. Her other novels include Bright Young Things, Going Out, PopCo and The End of Mr.Y, which was longlisted for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007. She teaches creative writing at the University of Kent.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely brilliant, November 16, 2005

By 

hollygolightly (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: PopCo (Paperback)

One of the most interesting and intelligent books I've read in a long time, PopCo ties together its spiky protagonist Alice Butler's childhood as a junior cryptanalyst with her current job developing products for a massive toy conglomerate. As she wrestles with her latest corporate challenge--how to market toys to teenage girls--she reflects on the nature of codes, cryptanalysis, cryptography, buried treasure, the ethics of marketing, and veganism.

This is definitely one of those books where you either read it and think it's an utter waste of time and mildly seditious, or you really wish the author was a friend of yours and you could call her up just to chat (to paraphrase Salinger).

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Intriguing, but a disappointing end, April 27, 2007

By 

David J. Ree (Brisbane, Qld, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: PopCo (Paperback)

This is a book with so much promise. The central character, Alice, is intriguing and the characters who surround her, particularly her grandparents, are real and likeable. The author keeps several plotlines on the boil at once, and all of them get you in: now-Alice as she struggles through a work conference in rural England, then-Alice as a child growing up in her grandparents' household with a growing interest in codes and cryptography and a mystery where someone at work is sending Alice encoded messages. Scarlett Thomas really gets you in and hooks you into the story, while doing a great job explaining code concepts, as good as Neal Stephenson in Cryptonomicon.

Unfortunately about two thirds of the way through the novel everything Thomas has built up started to just run out of steam. Alice starts having various crises of confidence both in the contemporary storyline and in her flashbacks and it all just starts to get a bit tedious.

For me, Thomas fails to bring any of the various storylines she has developed to any kind of satisfying conclusion. Most limp to a whimpering conclusion. A couple actually peter out altogether. The main "mystery" that's run throughout the book is a complete disappointment, with the denouement being a large dose of ill-thought out "let's all just only ever buy organic products and oppose globalisation" speechifying. I found myself reading the wooly-headed hugfest ending and exclaiming out loud "oh, please".

Such a pity for a book with such initial promise to end up like this!

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant, and like nothing you've read before, March 30, 2006

By 

D. P. Hock (Healdsburg, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: PopCo (Paperback)

Popco is an intriguing and intelligent novel that manages to present a smart, interesting and likeable heroine, several engaging plot lines, thought-provoking themes, and powerful writing. If you want a fast-paced action adventure story with lots of movement and dialogue, this isn't it. Instead, this story explores fascinating topics well and with depth, while keeping several mysteries humming along. Cryptology, the hierarchies of teen girls, marketing, virtual worlds, math, religion... this story touches on all of these topics and many more, but without being boring or trite. This novel is an excellent choice for anyone who wants to think about what they're reading.