(8.5)I really enjoyed this book and the theme of workplace sexual harassment. The one drawback for me was the character of A.A. Betga. I felt he introduced an element of farce and incredulity into the story. Also the perpetrators are never confronted about their grossly offensive behaviour nor charged with them. ( )

Such an good book, Tells us what it's like in the corporate world today and how hopeles the situation is for all women. ( )

As you know if you've read his Meet an Aussie Author profile, Elliot Perlman is one of my all-time favourite authors. No other author that I know of has so consistently been able to combine social critique and an exploration of the human condition, within novels that are unputdownable.

As an added bonus, Perlman's latest novel Maybe the Horse Will Talk is set in Melbourne, in the streets and alleyways of our corporate jungle, our bars and cafés, and even in Hawthorn's tree-lined streets and manicured gardens where it is said that people tend not to die because they're already in heaven.

Maybe the Horse Will Talk is the story of lawyer Stephen Maserov, who is absolutely terrified of losing the job he hates. Bound by the mortgage on the family home, (from which his wife Eleanor has evicted him because he's never home anyway) he—like every other lawyer employed by Freely Savage Carter Blanche (!)— lives in fear of the regular staff culls and the inevitability of losing his job. And so it is that when he stumbles upon a risky opportunity to stave off looming unemployment, he abandons caution and walks an extraordinary tightrope, while the senior partners sabotage him at every turn.

Maserov wangles himself into secondment in the office of a major client called Torrent Industries, where his more than somewhat awkward task is to make the claims of sexual harassment go away. Maserov is an ethical man so this (to put it mildly) puts him in a bind.

This issue gives Perlman an opportunity to articulate the problem of sexual harassment with forensic precision. The value of this is that men are going to be reading this book and getting the message that (a) sexual harassment is morally wrong and (b) it's stupid for any business to risk its reputation and the cost of litigation. Jessica, Maserov's colleague at Torrent Industries is being harassed by a senior colleague called Frank Cardigan, and she needs Maserov to stay behind after work to be nearby in case of trouble. 'Trouble', she knows, has already been very serious indeed for other women, but Maserov has a crucial meeting with one of the sexual assault victims so he can't help that night. And he sees beyond her usual office hours corporate demeanour that she is genuinely frightened. When he gently asks her about it, she acknowledges that while the corporate workplace delivers all kinds of fear because of the way power operates, there's a whole additional level of terror and disequilibrium that most men never really understand.

A woman in the workplace has her clothes discussed by her male colleagues, her appearance, her body shape, changes in her body shape, her reaction to sexual innuendo, to off-colour jokes about sex, unwanted, unasked-for flirting and her reaction to that, fear of casual bodily contact all the way along the continuum, offers to trade sexual favours for career advancement and the consequences of rejecting them, blackmail and every conceivable permutation of sexual harassment and assault all the way down the line to rape. There's no overtime, no salary, no perks of the job that make any of that worthwhile. (p.114)

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/09/27/maybe-the-horse-will-talk-by-elliot-perlman/ ( )