Disappointing commercial effort from columnist with insider knowledge

BOOK OF THE DAY: In Office HoursBy Lucy Kellaway Penguin, 343pp, £12.99 OFFICE AFFAIR etiquette, the arrogance of strutting chief executives, manipulation, jealousy, workaholism, absentee spouses, neglected families, and the greying fraying white underwear beneath the power suit.

In her second "spin-off" novel, Lucy Kellaway, the Financial Times columnist, whose column also appears in The Irish Timeson Mondays, shares her insider knowledge of corporate wolves and their underlings.

Kellaway's witty satirical take on the nitty gritty of life in the lavish corner suite made her first novel, Martin Lukes: Who Moved My BlackBerry, an "instant classic", according to the Financial Times, and brilliant satire (the Daily Telegraphand Evening Standard). The first book was a "spin-off" from her column, as is the second.

The premise is interesting: two female protagonists who have office affairs, from opposite ends of the executive power ladder. Stella is a married oil company economist with two children who she parents by mobile phone. She hides behind her reputation, and lies to colleagues so she can have sex with a junior male researcher 20 years her junior. She promotes him to make him more accessible, and in the process becomes businesswoman of the year.

Bella is a single mother who dropped out of university when her heroin-addict boyfriend got her pregnant, and now has an entry level job in the same oil company. She falls for her smarmy married boss, 20 years her senior, even though she knows he’s a womaniser and that she will end up losing her job.

Like marmalade, a book like this needs a balance between bitter and sweet, between satire and empathy. Readers don’t need a happy ending, but some sort of insight would be essential, and characters that you can grow to like despite their flaws would be basic in this sort of book.

Stella and Bella just aren’t likeable. Stella acts like a man in her exploitation, and becomes sexually addicted to her young male PA, who falls for her so hard that it’s not believable. They break it off, then get back together, over and over again in what readers will recognise as the cliched older man-younger-woman relationship where the balance of power rests with the older person.

Stella’s stormy emotional life passes her husband by, even when she invites her younger lover for dinner. And when Stella comes home late with a severe case of carpet burn on her back after a beneath-the-desk frolic, he believes it’s a rash. A failed documentary-maker, he is so withdrawn that there is no dramatic tension at all in their relationship.

Bella, in the traditional female role, knows she is being used by an unattractive boss whose wife’s bills for the Priory clinic amount to Bella’s annual salary, yet she can’t resist him because he treats her like dirt – and she likes it. She sees him as a hungry little boy who appeals to her most when he is dithering over sandwich choices in Pret a Manger. While Bella saves her good MS underwear for brisk hotel love-ins, Stella keeps her sexy lingerie in the drawer and plays the modesty card with worn-out whites for trysts in her lover’s tatty apartment and on the roof of her office building.

There is no moral code in operation – only the risk of being caught on CCTV, or having your BlackBerry messages intercepted by your kids. Kellaway doesn’t hold back from the ugliness of living a lie – especially when Bella’s daughter at the staff Christmas children’s party tells her mother’s lover, in the presence of his young sons, that he has left his dirty socks behind by her mother’s bed.

But fans of her column may be disappointed that Kellaway’s own brusque and comical voice doesn’t come through. She fits here into a standard template for commercial women’s fiction, and her own feisty voice falls flat.

Kate Holmquist is an author and an Irish Timesjournalist