Genre:
Contemporary Fiction/Literary Fiction
Description:
“Dan Underlight, a divorced, workaholic
technology executive, suffers lingering grief over the death of his
ten-year-old son, Zack. When Dan's longtime friend and boss fires Dan from
RadioRadio, the company that he helped create, he crashes and isolates himself.
Willow, a poet and domestic violence
survivor, helps Dan regain his footing. With her support, Dan ventures on a
pilgrimage of sorts, visiting Fortune 500 companies to flesh out a software
start-up idea. He then recruits three former RadioRadio colleagues and starts
Conversationworks, a company he believes will be at the vanguard of social
change.
Guided by Dan's leadership,
Conversationworks enjoys some early successes, but its existence is soon
threatened on multiple fronts. Will Dan survive the ensuing corporate battles
and realize the potential of his company? Or will he be defeated by his enemies
and consumed by his grief?”
Author:
Rich is a poet, a songwriter and musician, a creative writing teacher at
Seven Bridges’ Writer Collaborative, and the author of three novels, The Color of Home, The Big Wide Calm, and The
Beauty of the Fall. Previously, he enjoyed a successful career as a
technology executive, managing several multi-billion dollar businesses for
Fortune 500 companies.
Appraisal:
I became engaged in this story very quickly. The insights into
how personal and working relationships become strained in a start-up company
after it goes public were fascinating--I suspect the author’s past work
experience was put to good use.
The main character’s “pyramid pilgrimage” worked well as a
vehicle to highlight the yin and yang of family responsibilities and business
demands.
However, when Dan started his second company, the story
bogged down in a series of scenes that seemed to exists more to preach a
worldview than to progress the story. Dan’s treatment of Willow seemed out of
character to me, as though force-fitted in order to inject tension into a story
that had drifted a little too far into the realms of proselytizing.
Mr. Marcello’s writing flowed beautifully throughout. Dan,
Dan’s team, Olivia, and Willow were all interesting characters, and the premise
of Conversationworks provided an interesting view of the potential
problem-solving capabilities of a hi-tech social media platform that wasn’t
wholly focused on commercial gain.
Format/Typo
Issues:
No significant
issues.
Rating: **** Four Stars
Reviewed
by:
Pete Barber
Approximate
word count:
105-110,000 words
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