Lightning Rods

Amusing, insightful, surprising, reassuringly ordinary, dialectic…a model for salesmen everywhere, business acumen, broadly sympathetic, not to mention a key bit of advice for lobbyists with legislative friends

The beginning is definitely raunchy but as the story progresses it becomes less so, although possibly just as offensive, as it goes from the sexual, to the feminist, to the physically impaired and ending with the religious. The conceit of the story is of another business success: in a very straight faced manner, the author ridicules the business management stories constantly being published, by presenting a story of outrageous business initiatives. I would recommended this book for all those tired of reading management & business success books.

Caught me totally off guard but the tone and the story—dealing with a subject that should come across as totally juvenile—but ended up both being a pretty great social commentary with a generous dose of humor. The end is a little flat but the ride leading there is totally worth it.

Our Protagonist, Joe, has been a failure in life as a salesman at selling Encyclopedia Britannica and Electrolux vacuum cleaners. Then he realizes that to be a successful salesman he needs a product for which there is a natural unsatisfied need, which is how he comes up with his idea for his Lightning Rod employment agency. His agency will provide female employees, who will remain anonymous to both the people using her services and to all the other company employees. These employees not only provide the regular services associated with the job, but also sexual services to star male performers, so that they won't accost other regular female employees, which would instigate multimillion dollar sexual harassment suits. How Joe sells the idea to the job candidates and to the employers is the crux of the story. I have to say I admire the author's imagination in this area. One must engage in a minor suspension of disbelief for the ideas to ring true, but the overall story line is really cute and you want to root for all the characters, especially the former minimum wage office employees and professional escorts, who end up with dignified jobs plus about 60k/year and a chance to better themselves in real jobs. This is humorous fiction but also feel good fiction at the same time. Joe learns to deal with all sorts of problems as the government wanting to use his services to spy on its employees, the minority female with the highest score who Joe initially refuses to hire, since her anonymity would be compromised by the color of her skin, wherein all the other workers are white. It needs to be added here that all sexual alliances are made anonymously through a partition joining the men's and women's restrooms and only the rear end of the women is ever in view. The female author does a great job of explaining how this is possible. Joe also has to deal with a cut-rate competitor who offers a similar product but with lesser quality product [read intellectually and physically lacking in this regard]. The fun part is finding out how Joe manages to solve all these problems, while still not degrading his business by over-sampling his own product. The book isn't for deep intellectualization; it is merely for a fun read and it succeeds at that.

Like "A Modest Proposal", published just a few years before #MeToo went viral. Nothing like The Last Samurai (which I loved enough to read four times), but that's okay because this is also very good. It's fitting that she credits The Producers and "Springtime for Hitler" as inspiration. I probably won't read this one again, but thinking of certain passages still makes me laugh.

Helen DeWitt is brilliantly clever and both charmingly and humorously perverse ! Here she presents a clever modern day tongue-in-cheek variation on "A Modest Proposal"

I ordered this book as it was briefly reviewed in the New York Observer. I have no idea why they printed their review. It certainly did not cover the contents of the book. I wanted to read what the people of NYC were reading, and oh what a shock I received!! Can't believe it was written by a woman. I cannot believe an unsuccessful vacuum salesman could be successful following his sex drive. The book is crap with a capital C.

this should have been a short story. it runs out of gas very early on and never cashes in on what was a pretty funny premise.

Just ripped through this in a couple of hours without putting it down once! It's actually more thought-provoking than the blurb would suggest, I loved it!

The book was delivered in a timely fashion, the quality of the book was as described: good quality! Thank you.

Hilarious and never bleak (despite the fairly sinister topic). It's also very quotable. Very different from The Last Samurai, but I really enjoyed both!!!

Brilliant. Incisive. Deliciously offensive. Difficult to put down. Laugh out loud funny. Definitely not for the prudish, easily offended, or too purist reader. For those readers who may be disturbed by the female characters roles--it's satire, people. It intentionally crosses all the lines and boundaries of the Puritanical worldview. The fact that this book had to languish for 8 years with Miramax is the only tragic aspect of this story.

I've been eagerly awaiting more from Helen DeWitt since her tour-de-force debut The Last Samurai (still one of my all-time favourites) Lightning Rods was very different but certainly didn't disappoint. Great imagination, great characters and lovely, compelling prose. The topic could have been a bit salacious and grubby, but the way she handles it is thought-provoking in the style of the best satire. More please, Helen!