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Slab Rat
 
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Slab Rat (Paperback)

by Ted Heller (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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3 new from £1.25 22 used from £0.01
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Paperback £7.99 £7.19 56 used & new from £0.01

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Product details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Abacus (24 Feb 2000)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0349112649
  • ISBN-13: 978-0349112640
  • Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.4 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 1,172,152 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #4 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > H > Heller, Ted

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review
It took five days to settle on BEST BETTE for Bette Midler and WHO ARE YOU KIDMAN? for Nicole Kidman. It seems the worse the cover line, the longer it takes to concoct: HANKS FOR EVERYTHING for Tom Hanks, ELLE ON WHEELS for Elle MacPherson, STONE ALONE for Sharon Stone had taken about a week each...

It is a trashy celebrity monthly crammed with high-cheekboned movie stars and exposes of the rich. Manufactured in a New York skyscraper aka slab, "a black monolith sixty stories high", it complements the publishers other titles Her, Men, Ego, Him, Boy, Now and Here. The protagonist Zachary Post is one of It's "slab rats", chasing celebrity interviews and reviewing books he has never read. Self-pitying and lazy, he lives in a state of paranoia, in fear of his faked CV being discovered, and becomes embroiled in complicated office romances.

Slab Rat depicts claustrophobic office life in painful detail, from awkward lift conversations to wars over who gets who coffee. Zachary smirks gleefully when the smarmy upper-class English "new boy" Mark Larkin sends faxes the wrong way round. Vitriolic internal emails fly back and forth between ecru cubicles. Self-interest rules and colleagues go to any lengths to move up the ladder. Zachary's jealousy and bitterness take over when the "new boy" is promoted before him. Fear of failure "lingers long into the night". He sets out to get revenge.

Based on Ted Heller's experiences working for Vanity Fair and other top US magazines, Slab Rat is well observed and very funny, with the only irritation being Heller's stereotyped and inaccurate ridiculing of English people. Alongside Douglas Coupland's Microserfs and Matt Thorne's Eight Minute Idle, it's a classic office novel. The moral being, as the old country song says, "You gotta get tough or die". --Sarah Champion

LITERARY REVIEW
'The writing is sharp, with a succession of hilarious set pieces building up to a perfect climax' Matt Thorne,

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Customer Reviews

9 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
4 star:    (0)
3 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
5.0 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, A must read., 20 Jun 2001
This review is from: Slab Rat (Paperback)
This book is a witty, funny and revealing book about the life of an ascociate editor at It magazine with a career that is going nowhere. There will be someone in every office that can identify with this character, but the humor underpinning it makes it a fun an compulsive read.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A hiliarious expose on magazine journalism, 26 April 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Slab Rat (Paperback)
Slab Rat is a hiliarious and highly intelligent expose on journalism and office politics set in a large American magazine company. It's filled with an assortment of shallow, highly-selfish and ambitious characters who will do anything to get to the top. It reads like a soap opera on speed with infighting, bitching and backstabbing, office sex, overseas trips, deaths and marriages all on the agenda. It's a wonderfully funny book that cuts close to the bone at times (who hasn't wanted to kill an annoying colleague or two at times?). While people in the media, particularly magazine publishing, will love it, it's the kind of book that should appeal to anyone who loves a good satire with a well constructed plot and deliciously "interesting" characters.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A chocolate box of a novel, 29 Mar 2000
By A Customer
'Impossible to gloss over, this chocolate box of a novel comes laced with strychnine and a moral post-mortem. Following his dad's quixotic footsteps, not to mention those of McInerney and Easton Ellis, Ted Heller handles his legacy with style' I-D magazine
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars describes what you would like to do...come on admit it you would.
Slabrat by Ted Heller is wicked satire of office politics is based on his experience of work at magazines such as Vanity Fair. Read more
Published 17 months ago by John

5.0 out of 5 stars Sharp ... hilarious
'The writing is sharp, with a succession of hilarious set pieces building up to a perfect climax. Anyone who's ever worked in an office will find much to delight them here' Matt... Read more
Published on 29 Mar 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars A wild, hysterical romp
Funny and serious, biting and sweet, this tour de force of a book had me convulsing with laughter from the first page to the last. Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars Bravo!
Slab Rat is the sort of novel that leaves a wonderfully bitter taste in one's mouth. The characters, with a few notable exceptions, are truly an atrocious lot, yet somehow manage... Read more
Published on 23 Mar 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars Laugh out loud funny
I purchased this book in London before flying to the US on business. I read the book on the plane without missing a beat - I don't recall reading a book that made me laugh aloud... Read more
Published on 11 Mar 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars The funniest novel I've ever read about office politics
This is a book for everyone who has ever dipped a toe into the shark-infested waters of office politics. Read more
Published on 1 Mar 2000 by richard.beswick@littlebrown.com

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