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In Office Hours, By Lucy Kellaway

Reviewed,Emma Hagestadt
Friday 16 July 2010 00:00 BST
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Just when you might be thinking of escaping work for a couple of weeks, Lucy Kellaway's must-pack summer read will take you straight back to office life.

Set in the marmoreal offices of a global oil company, Kellaway traces the trajectories of two doomed love affairs.

Stella, the company's most senior female executive, seems far too sensible to risk her career and family for a relationship with a callow trainee half her age; while further down the corporate ladder, Bella, an over-qualified PA, falls for James, her married and emotionally withholding boss.

A columnist at the Financial Times, Kellaway cleverly captures how boredom and amorous emails can turn the paunchiest of CEOs into objects of desire.

Funny, frank and shrewd, this comic novel is always on the money.

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